"The agreement is not perfect, but what is in life?"

Kindly follow the link below to watch Christiane Amanpour interview the head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, who was yesterday recognised as one of Nature's Ten people who mattered in science this year, on the achievements of COP21.

http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2015/12/14/climate-intv-amanpour-christiana-figueres.cnn

Something that jumped out at me is part of the interviewee's response to the criticism that the emissions reductions pledges made at the conference do not seem to be enough to meet a 2 °C target (~ 04:45).

"We do have major technologies that are only beginning to step into their potential and what this calls is forward is to actually exploit the full potential of [renewables], and of course there are other technologies that are coming on board and that I think are going to be accelerated by this huge push . . . This is not something that is going to be solved at the stroke of a pen, or even at the gavelling of a legal document . . . What has to happen now is that [evolutions in capital, technology and policy] can and will be accelerated through this global agreement."

Count how many times the words 'capital' and 'technology' are repeated over the course of this interview. It appears to me that Ms Figueres wants to stress that the UN's climate change strategy is not so much one of curbing emissions, but reliance instead on business to invest in mitigation technologies – an attitude that makes me rather uneasy.

Also, for some reason, I also find the use of the word 'exploit' in this quote very, very droll.

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From Cartoons for Peace.