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Environmental pact just a plan

The Glasgow Climate Summit ended this weekend with a compromise agreement on what to do about global warming. The world leaders and negotiators who drew up the plan are hailing it as a chance to keep the earth’s climate from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, but scientists working with the global data see the earth on a path to a hotter future.

That’s the trouble with plans. Scottish poet Robert Burns, who may have been to Glasgow once or twice in his lifetime, wrote that “The best laid schemes o’mice and men / Gang aft agley (often go awry), / And lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain / For promised joy.”

The U.S. and China have agreed to cooperate more and work harder to contain emissions, and other countries have agreed to work on reducing methane and other greenhouse gases.

But planning and doing are two different things. We are glad that some good compromises and agreements came out of the Glasgow summit, but the target dates are 10 to 30 years in the future, and who knows what disagreements and political setbacks might occur by then.

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