Science correspondent Heather Goldstone is in Paris this week for the climate talks.
The conference center officially closed on Sunday, but related events continue and evidence of the climate talks was visible throughout the city. Rev. Deb Warner of the Church of the Messiah in Woods Hole, who is also in Paris for the talks, says that as she walks around the city, she’s struck by the feeling that Paris has embraced the climate negotiations.
All around the city, people have found ways to draw attention various impacts of climate change and efforts to slow it. In the Place du Pantheon, twelve large chunks of ice are slowly melting. Water runs between the cobblestones, as children run between the stranded ice bergs.
The pieces on display were originally free-floating ice bergs calved from Greenland’s glaciers. The Ice Watch art installation is intended to bring Parisians and visitors face to face with the reality of global warming.
Meanwhile, ocean scientists have been working to bring negotiators face to face with the ocean.
From sea level rise to ocean acidification, the ocean is intimately intertwined with how climate change progresses and how it affects us. And yet, the word ocean has never been included in a U.N. climate agreement.
That could change. On Friday, at an Ocean Day event, one presenter called on attendees to bombard their delegates with requests to include the ocean and – by the end of the day – oceans appeared alongside forests in the opening section of the draft agreement being negotiated here in Paris.