Monday, December 21, 2015
Is the Paris Climate Accord “Good Enough”?
When I read the draft text still in play last Friday morning, I was close to despair. Here we go again, I thought. The same issues dividing the rich and poor nations seemed to have the delegates at loggerheads. Then, Saturday morning, the leaders of the conference appeared, holding victorious hands aloft over an agreement which stated in principle that climate diplomacy had some common goals and guidelines. This was clearly a victory, and I breathed more easily for a day. For the first time since Kyoto, the planet had a climate accord.
But
as the Nation's blog
put it, “the fate of the world changed in Paris, but by how much?” It
all depends on how quickly we can convert to a carbon-neutral economy
(“the last half of the century,” as the agreement puts it, is
clearly too late). And one of the mechanisms upon which the
agreement leans heavily to reduce the CO2 already in the atmosphere –
biofuels producing CO2 that will generate heat and electricity as
they
are sequestered,
has already been dismissed by serious scientific studies.
This continuing reliance on global corporations'
profits is
what those demanding
they be banned from the table had predicted. Other more promising
solutions, like soil carbon storage, are not even mentioned in the
text. What is mentioned is the much-touted forestry initiative (REDD) preserving forests and planting more trees in countries with
few resources but forests, offsetting continued carbon emissions
whose negative effects are traded with a supposedly marginal benefit
(loss) in net carbon. This is more of the failed Kyoto process, and
it deserved no place in a viable agreement. Carbon credits can be
gamed, as has been abundantly shown in the EU's carbon market.
A
carbon cap-and-tax program, however,
with
revenue going to climate ameliorzation (not individuals) would
be something that could move us swiftly towards the carbon-neutral
goal (for 2 degree C max rise, by 2050; for 1.5C, 2030-40. These
are the “official” figures from IPCC consensus, but they
are compromised
by political pressures upon and
within the
IPCC).I find the best site for unraveling the complexities of a carbon tax is the Carbon Tax Center. But the key move, one which needs to become the international norm, is to revise income and corporate taxes by re-working them in accordance with taxing fossil carbon. The bottom line in a post-Paris economy is carbon, not dollars.
The biggest players
asked for some of the biggest leniency, but in fact these two
countries led the way into the INDC era with early pledges in a joint
press conference last fall. Such behavior promises a different
scenario for geopolitics than sparring over artificial islands in the
South China Sea. The paradoxes are endless, but if these two
countries can really work together towards carbon neutral economies
- with the US contribution coming mostly before China's promised
peak in 2030 – then the rest
of the world may well do their part, especially with the EU
continuing to lead in carbon reductions.
Despite
the new international consensus which Paris COP 21 represents, we
need to be realistic about the monumental task ahead. The
speed at which climate change is disrupting the world makes talk of
future carbon neutrality extremely tenuous. We
already have several failed states, with climate change, mostly from
drought, the key element in each collapse. These failed states have
sent the first wave of climate refugees into the world, and finding
homes for them has proved hugely challenging. With tens to hundreds
of million more in upcoming decades, just keeping the world out of a
war of all against all will be the utmost security threat. No wonder
George W. Bush's defense department ranked abrupt climate change as
our country's greatest risk, even as the President's party was
hardening its position of denial.
Agriculture
in an age of rapid climate change is the biggest challenge. In our reliance upon agricultural conglomerates, we tend to forget how important small and subsistence farmers are. These are at greatest risk in threatened areas such as Africa, India, and Bangladesh. The loss of farming opportunities in the drought-hammered Middle East has combined with the ill-advised US war on Iraq to lead to an increasingly desperate situation in the entire region. In a politically precarious area, the relationship between water, small farming and refugees is now a permanent condition. Feeding the world's enormously bloated population in turn creates pressure for more top-down solutions, which further delays
carbon neutrality, for that very pressure encourages increased
reliance on oil, even with more sophisticated tech. A vicious cycle is already in motion, even before the cascading positive reinforcements of global warming.
No longer our
grandchildren, but Boomers themselves.
We
have seen this coming for a long time, since before Kyoto. We have
spent the whole time, the Exxon interval, making up our minds over
how to respond to something which means the end of our methods of
production, requiring more than rearranging the furniture, creating more chances for profit among financially-savvy individuals
and companies. Contrary to what the polyannas continue to say, it
will require a huge change in our lifestyles, and a damping of the
ambitions of developing nations. The changes in climate equilibrium
which I first read would come in the latter third of this century are
hard upon us. It is no longer our grandchildren at risk. Thanks
to the wonders of modern medicine and some wise lifestyle choices,
many in my generation stand to be alive at the beginning of climate
catastrophe in a couple of short decades.
We
remain a species that has evolved to exacerbate growth, and just
saying we want to change (voluntarily) doesn't alter that. A friend recently sent me a link to a blog (forgive the title; it's not mine) which speaks eloquently to our dilemma. I have previously addressed this intractable species-defined problem in reviewing Too Smart for Our Own Good.
Can
we change fast enough, now that the world agrees that we must? The
fate of the world has indeed changed, due to the globalization of the
industrial revolution, powered by fossil energy. Can it change yet
again on an equal scale, with a huge down payment in the next five
years? I take that challenge personally, with a huge gulp and a
depth sounding of the gut. It's time to really bring everything I
have to the fight – as a writer, as a person of faith, as a
consumer, as a pensioner with a few financial resources to leverage, and as a political animal with the
temperament of a contemplative.As I posted today at another site, we must all follow our marching orders from the Inner Light
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