Final answer:
The first World Climate Conference in 1979 was significant because it represented a moment when climate change was recognized as a serious problem by the international community.
Step-by-step explanation:
The first World Climate Conference, held in 1979, marked a significant recognition of climate change as a serious global issue. This conference did not result in the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); that occurred in 1988 as a joint initiative by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The first World Climate Conference was crucial because it represented a foundational moment when the international community began to collectively recognize the challenges of our changing climate.
Later, critical international agreements like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) were established in 1992, and it was the UNFCCC's 2015 Paris Agreement that eventually adopted the goal of keeping global temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The World Climate Conference was indeed another step in the journey toward our current understanding and agreements on climate change, aiming for a global action plan to address the issue.
It should be noted that while the conference did highlight environmental issues, it did not specify the 2 degrees Celsius target, nor was it held in Stockholm or directly led to the formal acknowledgment that global average temperatures should not exceed 2 degrees Celsius. The answer to the student's question is that the first World Climate Conference was significant because (b) climate change was recognized as a serious problem.