Paris COP21 and JFK's moon address

ON Dec 12, a monumental announcement from Paris COP21 rocked the world. Nations agreed to an agreement to limit carbon emissions from fossil fuels to prevent a dangerous 2 degree Celsius rise (ideally not beyond 1.5C) that could wreak massive havoc on the world's climate. However, the agreement was toned down as the United States convinced other countries to adopt the word "should" (instead of the more powerful legal implications of the word "shall") in order to bypass a veto by the Republican-controlled US Senate. There were other compromises from previously hardline positions as well, but they were to be expected from negotiations of this magnitude.

However, this slightly toned-down agreement is not necessarily less powerful than it may seem. On the contrary, the moral significance of this agreement should not be lost on everyone: the world's nations have finally declared in a document that they agree with the premise of limiting carbon emissions to prevent dangerous climate change.

We should remember that when US president John F Kennedy said in 1961 that "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth", the scientists and engineers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) did not even have all the knowledge and details of how to achieve the mission.