Friday, December 14, 2018
Inconvenient COP
“We cannot fail in Katowice.” So Secretary General Guterres warned in Poland last week at the outset of the COP 24 conference of parties to the UNFCCC convention, which began in 1992. Nine years ago, at the pivotal COP 15 in Copenhagen, I was among those who saw a glimmer of hope. But the politicians, those who manage the form the awakening must take for humanity to unite to prevent climate catastrophe, have provided scant leadership over these 25 years, during which CO2 emissions have increased 65%.
It’s that time of year again, when Advent coincides with the COP. The challenge in Katowice, which is to outline a firm mechanism for achieving the carbon reduction goals pledged by 197 nations in Paris in 2015, is inconvenient for the nations of the world. They would rather deal with slightly less intractable issues. And it is inconvenient to Christians who don’t yet understand that, unless we have a viable species, we can’t worship the coming of the Christ-child.
I recently had an online debate with a colleague who claimed that “Politics is the major determinant of our lives.” I disagreed, pointing to instances where individuals overcame the external determinants of politics through inner spiritual development. But if we do not have a form to ensoul in, my point is moot. So, building upon his point, I will amend it to “Climate politics is the major determinant for the survival of our species.” Some people, their numbers probably accelerating as we approach the Event Horizon (not a Christianized Saturnalia, but the Incarnation as we never imagined it), will achieve enlightenment/moksha. But the billions who will require bodies in which to reincarnate to complete their spiritual perfection will be out of options – at least in the universe as we know it.
When I carried hope for the UN-led process, Barack Obama was president. He went personally to COP15, where he brokered the outlines of an agreement with the president of China, then our biggest opponent in the process of drawing up an international treaty to fight climate disruption. At COP 24, China is the leader of the forces attempting to drive a wedge against the Climate Beast, while the US is working with Russia and the Saudis to weaken the framework set in Paris. At COP 24, with Donald Trump having served notice that the US will withdraw form the Paris Accord as soon as contractually possible, the US has been further reduced from irrelevancy to laughing stock. Our executive, executor of the international goodwill towards the US that has been built since WWII, seized the COP24 stage to sell US coal, his agents improbably arguing that the right mix of fossils would help in the climate war. This may have delighted his base in the US, but the assembled company in Katowice literally laughed at the presentation. Sadly, extinction is no joke.
“Our world leaders have been behaving like children.” This is the judgment of my latest climate hero, Greta Thunberg, the Swedish 15-year-old who has been on strike from school in an effort to get political leaders to awaken from their moral torpor. Greta speaks from Stockholm every Friday. At first, she stood outside Parliament, where the cameras delivered a clear message. Now Parliament has forced her to move over the bridge, but those who are initiated into her courage don’t need the government trappings to get her point. In Katowice, where she has been featured in several venues, including an address to the hall of delegates, Greta has made it clear that “we” - the youth who are present in force at the conference, “are not here to beg world leaders to act,” but to serve notice that, since those leaders have consistently failed us, the people, led by those in their teens and twenties, will get the job done themselves.
In the UK, where Theresa May has withdrawn the Brexit deal for lack of votes, and public unrest like that tearing France apart is waiting in the wing, the other wing is soaring. The Extinction Rebellion, which means exactly what it says, was able to stop traffic in London, simultaneously occupying five bridges. Then with a sit-in of over one thousand, they blocked access to Parliament,. In just a matter of weeks, they have over 100,000 members world-wide. I am one of them.
Back in the US, the youthful Sunrise Movement blocked access to Nancy Pelosi’s office two weeks ago to demand that she lead a Green New Deal package as her top priority for the new Congress in January. A colleague drives his high school daughter to the actions, and reports an impressive degree of political sophistication and passion among the youthful protesters.
Greta Thunberg has called for a global climate strike by students today, December 14. There are already large-scale school strikes in Australia, with Canada also gaining energy and numbers. I sense that this is just the beginning, and my readers can help drive the momentum. Stand with Greta on Fridays at government offices, schools, and other public places. Write letters to the editor. More importantly, recored your own strike event and share it widely. This is what an extinction rebellion looks like.
It’s that time of year again, when Advent coincides with the COP. The challenge in Katowice, which is to outline a firm mechanism for achieving the carbon reduction goals pledged by 197 nations in Paris in 2015, is inconvenient for the nations of the world. They would rather deal with slightly less intractable issues. And it is inconvenient to Christians who don’t yet understand that, unless we have a viable species, we can’t worship the coming of the Christ-child.
I recently had an online debate with a colleague who claimed that “Politics is the major determinant of our lives.” I disagreed, pointing to instances where individuals overcame the external determinants of politics through inner spiritual development. But if we do not have a form to ensoul in, my point is moot. So, building upon his point, I will amend it to “Climate politics is the major determinant for the survival of our species.” Some people, their numbers probably accelerating as we approach the Event Horizon (not a Christianized Saturnalia, but the Incarnation as we never imagined it), will achieve enlightenment/moksha. But the billions who will require bodies in which to reincarnate to complete their spiritual perfection will be out of options – at least in the universe as we know it.
When I carried hope for the UN-led process, Barack Obama was president. He went personally to COP15, where he brokered the outlines of an agreement with the president of China, then our biggest opponent in the process of drawing up an international treaty to fight climate disruption. At COP 24, China is the leader of the forces attempting to drive a wedge against the Climate Beast, while the US is working with Russia and the Saudis to weaken the framework set in Paris. At COP 24, with Donald Trump having served notice that the US will withdraw form the Paris Accord as soon as contractually possible, the US has been further reduced from irrelevancy to laughing stock. Our executive, executor of the international goodwill towards the US that has been built since WWII, seized the COP24 stage to sell US coal, his agents improbably arguing that the right mix of fossils would help in the climate war. This may have delighted his base in the US, but the assembled company in Katowice literally laughed at the presentation. Sadly, extinction is no joke.
“Our world leaders have been behaving like children.” This is the judgment of my latest climate hero, Greta Thunberg, the Swedish 15-year-old who has been on strike from school in an effort to get political leaders to awaken from their moral torpor. Greta speaks from Stockholm every Friday. At first, she stood outside Parliament, where the cameras delivered a clear message. Now Parliament has forced her to move over the bridge, but those who are initiated into her courage don’t need the government trappings to get her point. In Katowice, where she has been featured in several venues, including an address to the hall of delegates, Greta has made it clear that “we” - the youth who are present in force at the conference, “are not here to beg world leaders to act,” but to serve notice that, since those leaders have consistently failed us, the people, led by those in their teens and twenties, will get the job done themselves.
In the UK, where Theresa May has withdrawn the Brexit deal for lack of votes, and public unrest like that tearing France apart is waiting in the wing, the other wing is soaring. The Extinction Rebellion, which means exactly what it says, was able to stop traffic in London, simultaneously occupying five bridges. Then with a sit-in of over one thousand, they blocked access to Parliament,. In just a matter of weeks, they have over 100,000 members world-wide. I am one of them.
Back in the US, the youthful Sunrise Movement blocked access to Nancy Pelosi’s office two weeks ago to demand that she lead a Green New Deal package as her top priority for the new Congress in January. A colleague drives his high school daughter to the actions, and reports an impressive degree of political sophistication and passion among the youthful protesters.
Greta Thunberg has called for a global climate strike by students today, December 14. There are already large-scale school strikes in Australia, with Canada also gaining energy and numbers. I sense that this is just the beginning, and my readers can help drive the momentum. Stand with Greta on Fridays at government offices, schools, and other public places. Write letters to the editor. More importantly, recored your own strike event and share it widely. This is what an extinction rebellion looks like.
Labels: Advent, COP24, Copenhagen COP 15, Event Horizon, Extinction Rebellion, global climate strike, Greta Thunberg, Paris Accord, Sunrise Movement, UNFCCC
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Brave New World: Geo-engineering
But the US is very
good at technology, especially the kind of tech that bends the earth
to do our will. We led the way in developing the atomic bomb, and
during the Cold War, competed with the Soviets not only for nuclear
superiority, but control of the weather as a weapon to be used
against our enemies. The long tradition of modeling ways to tinker
with climatic forces is now on the threshold of physical experiments
with the atmosphere and the oceans, and a “geoclique” has formed
to make sure that global civilization will not perish at the hands of
the Climate Beast. We missed our chance to save Earth, under her
rules, and now we will make her follow ours.
Earthmasters –
Australian public ethicist Clive Hamilton's latest book – lays out
this emergent Brave New World of geo-engineering. In his last book,
Requiem for a Species, he powerfully analyzed all the forms of
denialism that brought us to the brink. Here he picks up
these threads to show how the "Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering" (his subtitle) is being woven from the very same cloth. The supreme
irony is that conservatives in the US and elsewhere are strongly in
favor of climate engineering, without ever admitting the human-driven
climate change which forces us to consider such a dangerous
experiment. They side with the techno-elites who are confident that
humans can and will completely colonize and control the Earth, so
that “nature” is a zoo or farm within the over-arching domain of
the human. And global capitalism, riding on the back of Big Oil will
continue its hegemony. We will be as gods, for better or worse.
Hamilton calls this faction the Prometheans, after the titan who
stole fire and brought it to humanity.
Those of us,
including many scientists, who oppose the hubris of climate
engineering, prefrering to safeguard and keep God's Ark, Hamilton
calls Soterians, after the Greek goddess of safety, salvation, and
preservation from harm. Soterians are folks like Al Gore, Bill
McKibben, and EO Wilson, who would have us do everything possible to
reduce emissions, preserve habitat, and encroach on the ecospheric
commons as little as possible – admittedly a huge task for our
overdeveloped, overpopulated world.
But before we go
further into the political and social ramifications of the huge
divide at this crucial moment in Earth history, I will quickly review
the range of climate engineering techniques under development.
Geo-engineering methods can be best divided into two strategies. The
first entails the removal of excess CO2 by extracting the gas from
the atmosphere, depositing it somewhere safer. This strategy would
manipulate the great carbon cycle, which continually exchanges carbon
between the atmosphere, oceans, and the biosphere. The second
technique is solar radiation management, which would cool the planet
by reflecting a greater proportion of incoming radiation from the Sun
back into space. The two chapters in which Hamilton lays out these
two distinctly different strategies are very well researched and
clearly written. I will only review the highlights.
CO2 removal is
probably the only widely known climate engineering strategy. It has
been under development since the 1990's in the form of carbon capture
and storage, or CCS. It has been held out as a necessary technology
of great promise, permitting the continued consumption of “clean
coal” as a fuel for the world's growing demand for electricity.
Unfortunately, the process of burying the extracted carbon deep in
suitable geological formations has proved much more difficult than
thought, and far more expensive. Both the EU and the US terminated
their pilot CCS projects after a few years. The only successful
experiment has been in Finland, in a perfectly sited formation, but
at great expense. Essentially, CCS
from power plants is dead.
Other strategies
have emerged for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, including ocean
fertilization with iron particles, liming the oceans, mass planting
of trees, fast-growing algae, and biochar. Small experiments on iron
fertilization, aimed at increasing the rate at which CO2 is carried
to the ocean floor, have been tried, and were hugely disappointing.
The ocean system is much more complex than the experimenters
realized. Liming would require a huge infrastructure and be
energy-intensive. Tree planting and growing algae take too long.
Biochar is similar, plus scientists are not convinced it will stay
intact for as long as enthusiasts proclaim. All of these would need
to take place on a massive scale at huge expense.
However, a cheaper
method, more susceptible to fine tuning, would be to distribute
sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere from airplanes,
especially at the poles. Air currents would do the rest, and the
effect would last much longer than sea spray. The global average
temperature is already 1 degree C less than it would be without the
sulfate pollution from industrial processes. If we cleaned it all
up, then the temperature would immediately rise that amount,
effectively bringing us to a 2 degree C rise, the very brink of
runaway climate change. There are many dangers to this proposal, not
least being how easy it would be to do. Another is that it would
delay the repair of the ozone holes at the poles, which are closing
due to the first successful international treaty on emissions in the
Montreal Protocol, eliminating fluorocarbons from refrigeration.
Sulfate aerosols at the poles is the climate engineering plan of
choice for scientists working on the problem.
Labels: Al Gore, Big Fossil, CCS, climate disinformaiton, climate engineering, Clive Hamilton, Earthmasters, geo-engieering, Paris Accord, solar radiation management, sulfate aerosols
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Shock and Awe
Like most of you, I
am absolutely stunned by Donald Trump's shock and awe campaign. He
wields the executive pen like a kid in a candy shop. Not only is he
delivering on his abominable campaign promises, he's added nasty
surprises like proposing to sell off public lands. Congress has
already changed the rules to make it easier for him to do so. These
lands are the foundation of the modest beginning for EO Wilson's audacious, noble proposal to set aside half the earth for
wildlife to recover from the ravages of human-driven extinction.
One quickly realizes that it's not only the efforts to combat
climate change that his actions put at risk, but the protection of
habitat against the assault on wildlife. And he includes the National
Parks, our national treasures, in his inventory of real estate on the
block. Park Rangers (my son Jesse is one at Yosemite) have
courageously resisted his gag order, and the NPS chief has issued a magnificent rejoinder to our demagogue president.
It is hard to
imagine a worse set of cabinet picks, and the Senate is not showing
the backbone on either side of the aisle to stand up to him. He
bullied and lied his way – and worse – to election, and now he's using the same tactics as President,
relentlessly tweeting his “alternative facts.” More subtle
tactics are being employed by the true masters of propaganda, the
Russians, to convince the majority of it's citizens to acquiesce to a
totally false narrative about the historical and current realities in
their country, but Trump's moves in the same direction are chilling.
We must resist, and never tire of it.
Trump's narcissistic
lying means that nobody, friend or foe,can trust his word. This has
potentially catastrophic consequences. By continuing to belittle
NATO, he threatens the future of peace in Europe, with NATO members
Latvia and Lithuania looking like easy pickings for an emboldened
Vladimir Putin. If NATO does not resist their takeover, it is not
only obsolete, but dead. Meanwhile, Trump and Rex Tillerson are
rattling sabers over China's claims in the South China Sea, risking
war between major nuclear powers. John F Kennedy, a seasoned
politician with diplomatic skills, similarly risked nuclear war with
the Soviet Union over their Cuban missiles. But Kennedy was
reasserting the longstanding policy of control of our neighboring
waters declared in the Monroe Doctrine. Can our leaders not see that
China, as an established world power, has similar interests in their
own backyard pond? It is important that the World Court in the Hague
has ruled against their claim, but the Philippines, whose territorial
waters have been violated, has absolved China. We cannot afford to
police the world indefinitely. Are the South China atolls and
fortified reefs in our “core interests,” as China claims for
itself?
But can we count on
President Trump even knowing what the Monroe Doctrine is? Perhaps,
since he has delegated national security briefings to his
vice-president, he can have Pence do the research for him on our own
geopolitical history. After all, we shouldn't expect knowledge of
political science or policy matters from a real estate mogul and
reality tv host with the emotional intelligence of a six year-old (by
his own admission ).
From my perspective
as a climate journalist and activist, the ascension of an outright
climate denialist, with cabinet choices of a half-dozen more,
completes the campaign of disinformation mounted by the fossil fuel
industry, aided and abetted by virtually the entire Republican Party.
The rest of the world stands in absolute disbelief that the world's
leading power, with a strong postwar history of helping the recovery
of defeated nations and development of the Third World, has turned
its back on the future of civilized order on this planet. The tragic
irony is that this is occurring after a reluctant US finally was
party to a successful climate accord in Paris in December 2015, the
culmination of decades of agonizing diplomacy, attempting to
reconcile the competing interests of 197 signatory countries.
Trump appears to be
preparing the way for pulling out of the Paris Accord. Legal experts
point out that doing so formally would require almost an entire
presidential term. But prominent in the executive orders from his
Gatling-pen are a wholesale attack on government scientists, with gag
orders issued for all agencies. His leaked memo about dismantling
the EPA may simply be rumination, but he has fulfilled virtually
every promise, a feat even the best of politicians could not match.
The US has the best tools for data collection and analysis in the
world (NOAA, NASA, DOE, EPA), and these tools are being mothballed by
executive order. As one government scientist put it with respect to
climate data, “We are flying blind.”
So what can we do?
The purpose of shock and awe is to make such a gargantuan show of
force that the opposition is overwhelmed and collapses. That has not
happened, and I don't think it will. The women's march was
one of the largest marches ever, with simultaneous marches all over
the country, in Canada and abroad. From the women I have talked to,
they were so crammed that marching was not possible, everyone was
smushed together, inching along, or marching in place. This means the
usual guidelines for crowd estimates did not apply. The estimate of
500,000 seems low, lower than the 750,000 estimated in LA. Nevertheless, the
overall estimate of 3 to 4 million marchers across the country
definitely sends a message. But the Trump Resistance involves much
more than a one-off day of marching, as I will explore in my next
post. Courage!
Labels: Boy King, climate denialism, Donald Trump, EO Wilson, Monroe Doctrine, NATO, NPS chief, Paris Accord, shock and awe, South China Sea, Trump Resistance, women's march
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Shell-Shocked But Resilient
Dear Friends and
Family,
Today, I write you
at the beginning of a new era in American politics – I pray a very
short one. Never in my wildest imaginings did I think it would come
to this. I am shell-shocked, incredulous. The president-elect makes
Nixon look like a progressive (created by the political climate of
1970, when I attended the first Earth Day), and Reagan a relatively
harmless genial grandfather, though his policies created a launching
pad for Mr. Trump. George W. Bush, with all his failings, at least
acknowledged the reality of climate change on several occasions, as
did the 2008 Republican platform. That platform even insisted we had
an obligation to the poor who were at risk from its ravages, already
threatening their shores. Climate justice in a Republican platform,
two cycles ago.
The list of
hard-won accomplishments in the last eight years that Trump plans to
do away with is frightening. You all know that list, which, when
erased, would indeed wipe away Barack Obama's legacy. The pivotal
role of the Supreme Court going forward is key to much of what Trump
intends to undermine. At the very least, the Roberts Court will go
forward with a 5-4 conservative balance, and the probability of one
or more of the liberal octogenarians being replaced during Trump's
term is quite high, which would entrench that majority for another
generation.
I speak from a
place of privilege, a white male with a PhD, comfortably retired. I
am personally protected from the harm that Trump has either promised
or darkly hinted at, aimed at women (especially abortion rights),
undocumented workers, and the LGBT community. Muslims, both within
and without our borders, most of all climate refugees from the Middle
East, have been especially targeted.
However, as a human
being living in the Anthropocene period, I am hugely vulnerable to
his most momentous threat, to withdraw as soon as possible from the
Paris Accord which was negotiated last December, and went into effect
just last week under the looming shadow of the US election. The odds
of preventing catastrophic climate change are slim at best. Without
an international agreement pushing nations to set and periodically
ratchet up their carbon emissions reductions, those odds go from slim
to virtually zero.
One of the climate
warrior organizations to which I subscribe wrote today that the Paris
Accord would go forward without us, and the rest of the world would
continue to develop renewable energy so rapidly that we would be
caught up in the economic tide. But let's not kid ourselves. The US
and China, as the biggest emitters, need to lead the rest of the
world in the energy revolution. We are rapidly running out of time,
and the US's leaving the pact, just as it is getting on its feet,
would effectively kill this fledgling effort. The Paris Accord only
has a chance to dampen climate disruption if a culture of peer
nations, each trying to outdo the others in their pace of carbon
reduction through periodic review, is quickly established. Any
remnant of “greatness” left in our country would manifest in
competition with China to be first among those peers. To align
“greatness” with an attempt at rapid expansion of our economy,
powered by an all-out expansion of fossil fuel extraction, would be
even more devastating now than it was in the Reagan era.
As for China, they
are poised for leadership in the huge renewable energy market, once
we abdicate as their chief competitor. This happened before, when
Reagan tore down the solar collectors on the White House roof after
defeating Jimmy Carter and mothballed the emergent solar energy
revolution. Carter's plan for foreign aid during his second term
centered on capitalizing the shift in developing countries to
renewable energy for providing their increasing need for power. The
far-seeing Carter, our only engineer-president, saw this as a way to
leapfrog over the destructive fossil fuel pathway. I know this from
a member of the energy team he had assembled at the end of his first
tem. This was a huge blow to the climate struggle, even before we
realized what we were doing. This was thirty-five years ago, when
CO2 registered 339 ppm. We are well past the point where we can
afford a second blow of this scale. Forgive them, for they know
not what they do. Yes, Lord, in
1980. And now? The Creator's
forgiveness is
endless. Not so the Earth.
So what are we to
do? If Thomas Berry's prayer for “the re-invention of the human at
the species level” is answered rapidly enough, it won't matter that
we won't have an international agreement or governments committed to
reducing emissions and building a post-carbon energy infrastructure
at a wartime pace. Whether or not this requirement becomes reality
in the tiny interval remaining before it's too late, 3-10 years, we
can still work to change our own habits, and to build the resilience
of our local communities. Some of those communities are destined for
early dissolution, especially coastal communities that are already
vulnerable to frequent storm surges from rising sea-levels. But
others, like my own in Southern Appalachia, have a fighting chance,
at least for awhile. International climate diplomacy aside, climate
change happens at the level of the entire earth system, so even if
some places are spared the initial onslaught of the awakened giant of
climate disruption, refugees, some armed and desperate, will converge
on them soon enough. Stark questions of sufficient water, food and
shelter will ensue. This is already the reality in the Middle East and
East Africa.
The issues
associated with rapid climate change are inescapable. It's just that
with a Trump presidency looming on the horizon, they are coming at us
even faster than we had hoped. And those we would educate and
encourage to act mutually for the sake of our community, whether it
be local, national, or global, are now in power, ready to entrench
the very interests that are threatening global climate stability.
Our task is huge, and it involves some fundamental actions. First,
we must accept the new reality of a Trump presidency and everything
that entails. Secondly, we need to redouble our efforts at grounding
ourselves in a greater Reality, so that we are less effected by the
tides of change, the pain, angst, and loss. Thirdly, we need to each
find our place of resistance to the new regime, sharing with others
our process of discernment among the range possibilities available.
My next post will
outline my own personal choices along this spectrum within the rich
context of possibility in the international network for sanity,
resilience, and resistance. A key immediate opportunity is to
support the camp at Standing Rock, the Sioux water-keepers who are
risking their lives to block deployment of the Dakota Access Pipeline
(DAPL) through their Missouri River watershed and sacred sites. As
they prepare for the harsh North Dakota winter, they need food,
water, firewood, warm clothing and bedding, and reinforcements. They
also need contributions to their legal defense fund. I am happy
to report that a benefit at the Celo Community Center just down the
road this past weekend raised $900 for the fund.
Standing Rock is
the spear-tip of the phalanx constituted by the global climate insurgency (Jan 18 post). It is a pivotal community of civil disobedience
against the infrastructure being laid for a new era of fossil fuels,
the fracked oil and gas from the Bakken (Dakotas), Marcellus (NY,
Pennsylvania, and West Virgina) and Permian (West Texas) deposits.
Resistance groups are sprouting up along all of these proposed
pipeline routes. The attorney general of New York, backed by the
governor, has ruled against fracking in that state. But civil
disobedience, followed by consistent use of the necessity defense at
trial, remains our chief legal tool, in the US as well as globally.
Labels: climate insurgency, climate justice, DAPL, George W Bush, Jimmy Carter, Nixon, Paris Accord, Reagan, Republican platform, Roberts Court, Standing Rock Sioux, Thomas Berry, Trump
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Trial by Necessity: a Big Win for the Delta 5
In my post of Jan
18, I wondered what the verdict would be in the Delta 5 case. Five
defendants had blocked a train in 2014 carrying fracked gas,
stripmined coal, and fracked Bakken oil from North Dakota. Well, the
verdict is in, and the defendants were acquitted of “obstruction” and any financial losses accruing from their
action. Four of them were convicted on the charge of trespassing, for
which they had to pay fines, as well as court fees.
What is significant
about this trial is that the judge, Anthony Howard, allowed a
necessity defense to be argued for the first time in such a case (the
trial of Jay Ohara resulted in an implicit honoring of this rationale for blocking a coal tanker in Massachusetts, but there were
no legal arguments to this effect). However, when it was time to
charge the jury, he explicitly told them not to consider this
argument in their deliberations, because there was no precedent to do
so. One juror said later that if he had allowed them to consider
that line of defense, there would have been an outright acquittal.
Another juror
thanked the defendants for the “education” they had received by
listening to the witnesses for the defense. A defendant quipped,
“Welcome to the movement.” Jurors and defendants hugged at the
conclusion of the proceedings. It was a heartwarming victory, as
well as a toe in the door opening to the necessity defense. Setting
that precedent, which Judge Howard, though sympathetic, was reluctant to
do, would link the climate movement and the insurgents who are its
leading wave directly with the Justinian Code on res communes.
That would be a huge step
forward for enforcing the Paris accord and climate realism in
constitutional governments. And with James Hansen now directly
advising China, all of the major players in the unfolding endgame of
the climate drama would be involved.
(Hansen
told me via e-mail several years ago that he had given up on our
wishy-washy government to focus upon advising China, a more direct
process than having to make continual end-runs around a reactionary
Republican Congress. He was responding to my post on the
philosopher-king cutting the Gordian climate knot.)
Building
on this victory, 350.org is calling for a global wave of civil
disobedience aimed at keeping fossil fuels in the ground this May in
a campaign called “Break Free.” In the first four days of the appeal, 12,000 people signed up
worldwide, including this blogger. Read
about the campaign, and please discern what your part may be in
helping us Break Free, fulfilling Obama's 2008 campaign pledge,
something we all now know he could have never accomplished alone - or with virtually any Congress. Look around you - the fossil fools are everywhere, but you need to choose your targets strategically and wisely. The
time is ripe. Pluck the berry of opportunity while ye can. Let's talk about this!
Labels: 350.org, Break Free, Delta 5, James Hansen, Jay O'Hara, Justinian Code, necessity defense, Paris Accord, philosopher-king
Friday, January 30, 2015
Paris and Beyond: from Personal Morality to a Global Carbon Price
Do all aspects of your life bear the same witness?
A few Sundays ago, Celo Friends Meeting
was presented with this query. We
were deeply challenged by the question, and some rich confessional
ministry followed. After struggling for most of the hour, I got up
and confessed that my wife and I had quite recently bought into a
Vacation Club, and were now regretting it. I spoke far too long, and
in too much detail, including a bit of rationalizing that some of its
use would be “good for the family.” After all, we would save on
our biennial family winter vacations with extended family to warmer
climes like Central America.
The
club is expensive, though part of what caught us was the saving if
we bought it right then. And
they would also forego the annual dues, something that had always –
mercifully – brought us up short with fully transferable
timeshares. The irony is that we had gone to Charleston courtesy of
just such a timeshare sales pitch, and had appropriately steeled
ourselves for it. This one was unexpected, a street pitch that
caught us off guard. Why not, we
said, especially when they were giving us $100 for dinner on the
town. We now had a lifetime wholesale travel discount, trips and
condos, and agents to ease our way.
Afterwards, Geeta
asked if anyone had eldered me for going into too much detail. After
all, a public confession in Meeting is not the same as talking to a
shrouded priest, where confession needs to be as exhaustive as
possible. I said no, but thanked her for doing so as gently and
indirectly as she had.
But the main thing
I felt as I sat down is that I was relieved of my burden. In the
midst of speaking, I realized that I was still free – free to
question any proposal for travel, for whatever purpose. Free, as I
have always been, to give up air travel (though that would mean not
seeing my son and his wife and baby in the Sierras nearly as much),
free to lose as much of the money we had put down as I was willing.
In other words, moral choice remained, which is the most important
attribute of freedom I can think of right now. And in affirming
that, I could turn away from past ecological sin, and from this
particularly egregious financial error. That it was also an
ecological mistake was not yet an actuality.
With a Paris Accord
in the works for this December, these complex individual choices may
soon have a measurable context, framed by an international agreement
that will surely involve expanding a carbon market that is already
set to grow to 25% of the world in the next two years. Carbon
will be priced, taxed, and our individual choices, either for
comfort, pleasure, or necessity, will be weighed, not in terms of
ecological morality, but by market forces. One may rail against the
capitalist impulse, as Naomi Klein does so eloquently in her recent book, but this looks like the way it's going to be. I have long
observed that, if individuals (like myself) who have strong moral
compasses and are educated in climate science continue to make
choices which produce excessive carbon, then we need laws to frame
those choices for all of us, bending them in the direction of
biospheric survival, not relying on the existential choice to “live
our values.”
Klein's This
Changes Everything treats
climate change as the perfect storm, with only a complete rebuilding
of the global political order – from the bottom up – capable of
addressing the scale of the problem. Her analysis is exhaustive,
about as well done as a non-ecologist could manage. And it may be
that her prescription for a solution is correct. However, flawed as
it may be, the international process under UN auspices, with
everyone, including the smaller nations as well as big business at
the table, finally has momentum, and will very likely yield some kind
of agreement in Paris this winter. Even in the laggard US, with its
politics heavily influenced by a denialism that has ambushed and
bamboozled the Christian Right, there is a groundswell of Republicans
beginning to favor pricing carbon, from GW Bush's Treasury Chief
Henry Paulson to SC representative Bob Inglis. In a recent
statement, even the American Petroleum Institute faces up to the
reality that this is on the horizon.
Human beings are
flawed, however principled a minority may be. This is why prudence
requires laws and security forces, rather than relying on charitable
tendencies predominating in our human relations and consumer choices.
This is why pricing carbon at this point in history is so crucial.
Rather than attempting a global socialist revolution, as Klein and
Chris Hedges have been promoting, it may be more
straightforward, and a more efficient use of structures either
already in place or rapidly becoming so, to shift from a world where
money is the bottom line to one where carbon expenditures are. This
is already the case in the biophyscial world. Wouldn't it be wild,
if, after pricing all the “externalities,” we ended up using
that catalogue of essentially priceless “ecosystem services” to
shift to a currency that is based on the carbon cycle, rather than
the exchange of extractable resources and human services? Herman Daly, can you help me with this?
Labels: American Petroleum Institute, Bob Inglis, carbon market, Chris Hedges, ecosystem services, Henry Paulson, Herman Daly, Naomi Klein, Paris Accord, This Changes Everything
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