We have a climate treaty - but at what cost?

After two weeks, huge amounts of political rhetoric, and much activity behind closed doors at the Paris climate change conference, we have a treaty. While there will be celebrations among activists, the Paris Treaty will do very little to rein in temperature reductions.

The Paris Treaty promises to keep temperature rises below 2 degrees Celsius. However, the actual promises made here will do almost nothing to achieve that.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change estimates that if every country makes every single promised Paris Treaty carbon cut between 2016 and 2030 to the fullest extent possible and there is no carbon leakage, CO2 emissions will be cut by 56 billion gross tons by 2030. The math is simple: in an implausibly optimistic best-case scenario, Paris leaves 99 percent of the problem in place.