The UN’s latest climate meeting ends positively

MAKING KATOWICE the host of COP24, the latest of the United Nations’ annual climate summits, was meant to symbolise the transition from the old, dirty world to a new, clean one. Spiritually, the city is the home of Poland’s coal miners. Today, it is replete with besuited management consultants and bearded baristas. The venue itself was on top of a disused mine in the city centre.Ahead of the two-week powwow, which concluded on December 15th, many observers feared that the meeting would instead highlight the unresolved contradictions involved in making that transition. It therefore came as a relief that nearly 14,000 delegates from 195 countries managed—more or less, and a day late—to deliver the gathering’s primary objective: a “rule book” for putting into practice the Paris agreement of 2015, which commits the world to keeping global warming “well below” 2°C relative to pre-industrial times, and preferably within 1.5°C.