‘Shall,’ ‘Should,’ and the Fate of the Earth

By Ben Yagoda. Words matter. An obvious proposition, but never so obvious as in the agreement recently adopted in Paris by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Deconstructing Paris, a New Zealand website devoted to analyzing the various drafts leading up to the agreement, noted that the penultimate draft contained more than 1,000 sets of brackets, offering alternative wordings from which the delegates had to choose. More...