History has no on-off buttons. Change is never instantaneous. But President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent accord on greenhouse gases may allow the world to start dialing down dangerous carbon emissions.
Past experience shows this can be true. Similar trial-and-error diplomacy in the 1880s helped avert another environmental disaster. Negotiations took several decades, but the United States finally reached agreement with its oldest nemesis and most powerful economic rival — Britain.
Together, Washington and London forged the world’s first environmental treaty and forestalled an extinction in the Bering Sea. The two archenemies, however, did not put the many suspicions behind them all at once. Like Obama and Xi, they began slowly.
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