On 4 November last year, when many of us were watching the aftermath of the American presidential election, the US formally left the Paris Climate Agreement. Written in 2015 at the United Nations’ COP21 climate conference in Paris, the agreement is often considered to be the most significant document of international climate cooperation. Back then, under the watchful gaze of tens of thousands of protesters who defied a French ban on demonstrations to demand radical action on climate change, the Paris Agreement was to try to limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. In many ways it was a step forward. It acknowledged that the previous figure of two degrees was not enough and it recognised the growing and immediate threat to nations predominantly in the Global South.