In case you missed it, almost 200 nations signed an agreement pledging to hopefully limit rising global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 or 2 degrees Celsius by 2070. Even the United States and China signed on, despite both being loth to agree to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

While the whole affair seemed miraculous, in many ways it was business as usual. Of course the signing parties promised to limit global climate change. Any self-respecting national would do so, lest it be seen as complicit or implicit in the suffering of future generations. Yes, the international community did agree something had to be done. The implementation will be much trickier.

Fiona Harvey of the Guardian remarked Dec. 13 that this was the world’s greatest diplomatic success. When previous benchmarks include the Treaty of Versailles, the regular dealings of the U.N. Security Council and the Israel-Palestine peace process, I suppose this is true. When every nation, no matter how small, has a say at a massive forum, this is indeed a special moment.

In the next few months we will start to see the finger pointing, name calling and general wilting of this deal as wealthy nations call on the developing ones to change, and developing nations demand the developed world pay for hampering their development.

Even more bruising will be President Obama facing down a Republican Senate likely hell-bent on making another political fight. Obama will once again be accused of somehow violating the constitutional purview of the Senate to ratify treaties, and Obama will be cornered into soapboxing about the moral implications of not agreeing to this pledge. Even some Democrats from coal country will have a hard time ignoring the angry miners.

For those who know me well, it is a poorly-held secret that my politics are quite … rarified. On a good day, I have monarchist and globalist tendencies. Like many people likely too well-read and too educated for their own good, the idea of a philosopher empress or emperor leading us into a new golden age sounds thrilling. I love the Lord of the Rings, and even more the idea of the return of the king. I keep thinking, especially as a Christian, how no politician I can think of has been named in the last century a saint by any church. Curious, however, is how the Russian Orthodox Church in the last decade made Nicholas the II a saint and martyr.

What does this have to do with the climate conference and political fighting? Surprisingly, a great deal.

Considering the structure of the global agreement and the lack of any cohesive instrument of implementation, it will be a wonder if anything gets done by the deadlines.

The U.N., despite its failings, has an extraordinary capacity for good. A vast amount of good research, good ideas and good work on behalf of minorities, women, children and the poor comes out of its many organizations across the world. Some of the millennium development goals have even been reached. For example, extreme poverty, defined as people living on less than $1.25 per day, has been reduced from 47 percent of the world population to 14 percent. Cheers to some good progress.

Yet, everyone gets on board with helping poor people by one method or another. We just fight about how to do it.

Global climate change is another issue entirely.

The issue of united, multilateral action on the part of 196 countries is like getting the entire family – including both sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins – to agree on what movie to go see on holidays. It almost never happens unless you come from a family where Granny is more or less in charge.

This is because, quite plainly, the U.N. is not a government. It is barely a government organization. It is a potent mixture between a non-governmental organization (NGO), university research department and a debate club. Dictators and autocrats rub shoulders with democrats and Nobel Peace Laureates. It is, in a word, a mess.

The problem with international cooperation and governance begins even closer to home. Our own governmental structures are barely functioning. The military is strapped with mandatory sequestration; social security likely will not exist in 50 years; and the Affordable Care Act has done only a haphazard job of fixing the trudging beast known as American healthcare. Let’s add to the list: political deadlock; demagogues on the campaign trail; crushing rates of student debt; and continually large levels of underemployment.

If the U.N.’s problem is that no overarching social contract exists for the world, our problem is that our social contract is either tearing or is shredded already.

The preamble and mission statement of the U.S. constitution says, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Justice is not being established. The struggle for civil rights for all has never ended. Women are still being paid less than men. People of color are overrepresented in the penal system and poverty statistics, but underrepresented (and maybe even poorly represented) in the halls of power. Transgender people are being murdered on the streets for who they are.

We are not domestically tranquil. The news cannot seem to report enough the number of shootings taking place every day in this country. Setting massacres with awful assault weapons aside, people, young people, are murdering each other with handguns on the streets every day.

Let’s take the common defense. I don’t think massive budget cuts defend us well, but neither do misappropriation of defense budgets for idiotic and useless military research programs. As a serviceperson told me once, the defense cuts are just as bad for the military as being thrown massive amounts they don’t know what to do with.

The general welfare I do not see. The wealthiest nation in the world should not have the income disparities, poverty traps, lack of cohesive safety nets, crumbling infrastructure and patchwork regulation we have. We are smarter and better than that, but the results of the last days seem to indicate otherwise.

To secure the blessing of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, we need a radically different political, economic and social settlement. This would likely require nothing less than a new constitution, a new way of government and a drastic rethinking of our societal values.

Here comes the tangent, but stick with me. I have watched the “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” trailer many times, and each time I get goose bumps. Part of it is just a love for that fictional universe, but there is another reason: it is a universe of noble, epic struggles.

We lack that. I am not saying we should look to paint people as Sith lords or Imperials and go kill them. I am, however, saying that we need to seek again for deep purposes and grand societal goals.

There is no denying that the status quo is both toxic and unsustainable. Quite literally our current local, national and global state is killing us. We were once a people that strove for the stars, not for the next windfall bonus or one-night stand. We believed in more than just cynicism and sex. Not long ago in this same galaxy we believed in securing by whatever means necessary justice, tranquility, the common good and the blessing of liberty for ourselves and everyone else. We fought and won wars for those and lesser ideals.

I am not pining, as many do, for a bygone golden age. I am pining for a golden future. I am pining for us to struggle for that future.

We as a nation, as a species, were meant for glory. We were meant to reach for the stars and take them into our fold. Our world, our Earth, our Terra was meant to be the beacon of light in the darkness of space.

Humans have the capacity for endless cruelty and greed. We know this. We also have the capacity for endless love, compassion and empathy.

I do not have faith in the agreement out of the Paris climate summit because it is shortsighted. The U.N. is shortsighted. In many ways, the U.S. was built to be shortsighted, too. The potent cocktail of democratic processes for just about everything, mass media and instantly gratifying consumerism provide an environment of endless opportunism, profiteering and rent seeking in institutions that need it least.

The agreement, the U.N. and the U.S. were all built on the foundation of maximal participation and minimal disagreement. In the vein of the Third French Republic, these participatory artifices were and are meant to be that which divides us least.

Unfortunately, this desire to offend no one leaves everyone grossly dissatisfied and most political jobs half done. I exhort us to do better.

I am not exhorting us to have an all-powerful monarch over the United States or even the world. I am, however, calling us to deeply consider a global constitution, a global social contract, a foundation for a liberal, democratic and progressive global order. Moreover, we should strive for the greatest of heights, not merely that which sells well. We deserve something imperial, if at least for our goals to be measured in the currency of glory, beauty and new levels of human flourishing.

So, my friends, as you continue to study and work in earnest in the days to come, think of what could be. We have the historic opportunity to be architects of a future beyond our currently limited imagining. We have the dream of glory for all humanity in front of us. We just need to let it in.

Tyler Laferriere is a first year master’s student in applied economics and statistics from Phoenix, Ariz. He can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of the Office of Student Media.