Claim no easy victories. Paris was a failure, but a climate justice movement is rising

The terrifying deadlines approached by climate change tempt us to despair. But the face of the movement stirs us to courage.

Two certainties existed entering the Paris climate talks. They hold as true coming out. The first was that the world's heads of state were not prepared to act as is necessary. The second is that it was never going to be up to them anyway.

The richest governments - politically captured by a fossil fuel-wedded corporate class - were hobbled from the outset. It was the movement being built by activists around the globe that shaped the best of the Paris agreement. And what was worst they were unable to prevent.