9 When governments were scrambling in the dying days of the COP21 climate summit in Paris to forge a new climate agreement, typhoon Melor (Nonoy) was approaching the Philippines, again uncharacteristically a few days before Christmas. As the politicians continued to celebrate the agreement, the out‐of‐season storm left many communities in shambles. This leads us to reflect on how words on a piece of paper crafted in diplomacy matter little to real people on the ground confronting climate impacts. We have fairly entrusted some hope in the larger UN climate process, and in effect the Paris Agreement, as a way for the international community to take significant albeit small steps forward in confronting the climate crisis. The process through which the accord was painstakingly crafted was also a manifestation of a triumph of effective stewardship by the French hosts. But we should guard our sense of jubilation, because the Agreement is not just far from being perfect; it is far from what the world requires. It was more of a coup de grace than a victory. While the agreement provides placeholders for important fundamental issues and the preamble contains keywords that can make climate diplomats declare triumph, real people and communities on the ground impacted by the ravages of climate disruption and fossil‐ fueled development aggression, would find this tokenism woeful. The nations that agreed to this outcome cannot take sanctuary under a diplomatic resolution that risks trivializing the suffering of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. The word “commitment” does not appear in the Paris Agreement. This is so because the most powerful nations on earth, developed and developing alike, refused to use this word in order to achieve a political compromise that would be expedient for governments. The endeavor of the United Nations was to enhance the implementation of the 1992 climate treaty. Instead, compounded by serious inaction, it has slipped and stumbled over the years. The Paris Agreement is a weaker agreement than the 1992 Climate Change Convention. It is also weaker than the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. What this agreement represents is the sheer avoidance of rich countries to be accountable for the climate crisis and the acquiescence of others to the weakening of the climate regime, again gravely ignoring the importance of equity, fairness, adequacy and genuine ambition. The issue of “loss and damage” was clearly a lost cause when rich countries treated it with perfunctory interest, and was even further lost with the brutal qualifier that the issue “does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation”. Promises are best measured by how one proposes to achieve them. On this count, the agreement is big on goodwill, but very scarce on concrete actions that can make good on the promises. On the means of implementation, the accord merely rehashes previous agreements and rich countries were again hugely reluctant to boost the scale of financial resources to bolster the transformation of the global economy that will save the climate, allow human and natural ecosystems to cope, and that would address the development crisis. Treating the promise of the inadequate US$100Bn per year by 2020 as a floor is no reason to be ecstatic because climate finance is already watered down by definition, and how we even get to US$100Bn is an enigma, with only 10% of this amount pledged so far, with many strings attached.