On Friday, representatives from 175 nations signed the Paris Agreement, which outlines voluntary carbon emissions and climate targets. It's doubtlessly a momentous step in the climate conversation: After decades of the climate-conscious pinning their hopes on a series of stepping-stone treaties that sound like Robert Ludlum novels—the Kyoto Protocol, the Copenhagen Accord, the Bali Action Plan, and so forth—the Paris Agreement is notable because it marks the first time the vast majority of the world's nations have all signed a document saying that we must limit "global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels" with a goal of keeping it below 1.5 ºC, or face disastrous consequences.

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