ABSTRACT
Sustained, committed action in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and International Maritime Organization to level off and stop the growth of greenhouse gas emissions in the global commons is very little and late in coming over the 25 years since they were assigned the responsibility to act. At the same time, the international community only converged to establish and implement the critical Paris Agreement in 2015 and 2016, thus it is most surprising that these relatively less salient international organizations have been unable to act substantially even under the increased visibility and pressure from 2016 to present. In a crucial lost opportunity during the pandemic, the ICAO bodies decided to very substantially increase the baseline for CORSIA offsets by using the 2019 emissions level instead of the previously agreed, average of 2019 and 2020, which removed any role in slowing emissions in the short term, and clearly reduced its effectiveness in slowing the long-term growth of emissions.
