Same Old Same Old

In January of 2012, I wrote a summary in this column of the decision at the Durban UN Climate Conference to kick the can down the road with a promise to produce a binding agreement at the 2015 conference that would take affect in 2020.  Previous  to Durban, in Copenhagen, the world agreed that global warming must be limited to 2 degrees Celsius.  
Now that we are within a week or two of the opening of that 2015 UN Climate Conference in Paris, what has occurred in the interim?  Short answer?  Absolutely nothing.  Quotes in this article come from the one I wrote three years ago.
What I stated in that column in 2012 still holds true:  “The approach to climate change by industrialized countries has been, ‘How can we address climate change without endangering economic growth?’ Years of study by our best minds have not produced a solution. Many have concluded that it is the growth economy itself that is at the root of climate change. The fact is, we don’t want our growth economy to change and we don’t want climate change that will jeopardize it”.

I went on to say that:  “(I)n Asia, monkeys are easily caught by putting a fruit in a tethered jar that is sized so that, when the monkey grabs the fruit, he is unable to get his hand out of the jar. As it happens, very few monkeys will abandon the fruit even as they see their captor coming to take them.  My basis for hope lies in the premise that we haven’t seen our captors yet and that we will be smart enough to drop the fruit soon enough to avoid getting caught. The growth economy is our fruit in the jar. If we don’t drop it, we’re done for”.

Well, we have gotten a glimpse of our future, but we still won’t drop the fruit.  What we have gotten from various developed countries leading up to the Paris conference is a lot of mealy-mouthed promises of voluntary reductions that fall far short of what is needed to stay within 2 degrees C.   No binding agreement.   Not even a hint of reductions that come close to what is needed.  And we know from the past that what we promise is usually well short of what we will actually accomplish.

It is the same wealthy special interests who are impoverishing the rest of us who are hell-bent on leading us into a climate catastrophe.  To be fair, we are all to blame to some extent for loving our energy binging lifestyle.

Signs of hope lie in the same uprising of populist outrage that is manifesting in the Bernie Sanders campaign.  People are beginning to show that they refuse to put up with the wealthy minority jeopardizing our future.  In the same way, any progress in controlling our emissions and limiting climate change will have to come from us.  The industry-sanctioned climate talks are unlikely to produce anything without an unprecedented show of protest across the world.
“If we meet our carbon reduction targets, we will buy only a 50/50 chance of staying within 2 degrees C, and climate changes so far are proving to be worse than predicted. “If we wait until 2020, as we are currently intending, to start reducing emissions, all countries will have to then reduce emissions at a rate of 10%/year. When the Soviet Union collapsed, they had a 5% reduction. Ten per cent is unheard of. Even if we could do it, it is unlikely that China and India could”.  We can’t wait until 2020 to begin cutting back.  

What worries me is that a recent poll showed that a majority of Americans rate climate change as a minor worry.  
“In 1906, William James wrote an essay, “The Moral Equivalent of War,” in which he said that since war was the only thing that fully engaged the human spirit, a pacifist needed to find the moral equivalent to satisfy that need constructively. He didn’t foresee the situation we are in now. What is required here is an effort that is the moral equivalent of war. We are fighting for our existence and we can’t let the economy or our individual lives, much less our comforts and conveniences, stand in the way of what must be done. Jimmy Carter used James’ phrase to characterize what was needed to face this problem thirty years ago. We then voted him out of office in favor of Reagan’s “Morning in America.” We would be far better off today if we had started to transition then, and we definitely can’t afford not to act now. We can get our governments to move that 2020 date up if, as after Pearl Harbor, we have the courage and the will to do what needs to be done”.

Comments?  terry@vashonloop.com , 463 2812