Bible. Babel. Babble. Bubble?

The whole world had the same language and the same words. When they were migrating from the east, they came to a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, “Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire.” They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth.”

The LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the people had built. Then the LORD said: If now, while they are one people and all have the same language, they have started to do this, nothing they presume to do will be out of their reach. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that no one will understand the speech of another. So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.

That is why it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the speech of all the world. From there the LORD scattered them over all the earth.

                                                *           *           *

I sometimes feel that this little story from Genesis describes the current state of global decision-making better than most other accounts. Secular humanist readers may enjoy the fact that God, or the LORD, is clearly the villain here: jealous, malicious, the source of much trouble. Cynics might wish to equate the LORD of the story with the giant oil corporations, the Koch brothers and their hired deniers, or perhaps the global one-percent. But the enterprise itself--purged of moral censure (which doesn't show up much in the original text)--is what might interest us now: how to find a common language in which to engage all the scattered peoples of the earth in a shared project of exceptional scope.

First we have to undo God's spiteful punishment of our ancestors' hubris. We have to recover our sense of commonality, our shared language. And then we have to cooperate in the construction of something huge: a new, renewable, clean energy system, a biosphere redesigned around principles of equilibrium, sustainability, and equity. Can we reverse 10,000 years of violent competition, exploitation, ecological degradation? Or is the UNFCCC process, the hope for a sustainable agreement in Paris and beyond, just a dream, a bubble? Are we fated to live out our days in a post-Babel world?

Is This Time Different?

The Bonn climate summit has just ended: a 2-week marathon including all 195 COP countries, whose purpose was to streamline the preparatory documents for the December Paris conference. Did they? Not exactly, but they did reach a compromise where committee chairs will do the editing and submit drafts in a month or so. This comes after the February Geneva meeting, where the simpler draft from Lima last November was expanded to include all viewpoints. What a lot of slog these COP summits are! But unless the disagreements and frictions are rubbed away as much as possible, there is no chance that Paris will produce the sort of agreement--comprehensive, enforceable, augmentable--that it needs to.

To cite a single example: Chinese representatives dug in to support the phrase "differentiated commitments/contributions" where the US wanted the document to read "commitments/contributions/action." The Chinese phrase, which has its own UN shorthand, CBDR, is actually a placeholder for the argument that historic greenhouse gas emitters--mainly the developed West--own a greater share of the remediation than recently arrived industrial giants such as ... China. This sparring over phrases is either setting the table for unresolvable disputes in Paris, or more optimistically, getting them on the table now so that compromises can be worked out.

Meanwhile, concurrent with the Bonn conference, G7 leaders made a historic--if somewhat vague--declaration about ending the fossil fuel era; 80 major British corporations called on their government to take the lead in reaching a bold agreement in Paris; the six largest European oil corporations urged the UNFCCC to work toward a global carbon tax at the Paris conference; and in short, many wheels are turning to prepare for success in Paris. Jennifer Morgan of World Resources Institute suggested that these parallel meetings of governments and business leaders, more than the Bonn meeting itself, may represent the most important progress.

We've been here before. In 2009 hopes were afloat for a major agreement--but were this many players lined up to make it happen? I can't be sure--memory is a tricky thing--but I do believe the 'climate of opinion' now is different from what it has been, ever. The message that Paris must succeed in creating a meaningful agreement has reached boardrooms, recalcitrant leaders, defiant objectors, complacent upholders of the status quo. Paris and the climate crisis have broken through historic layers of apathy--not so much in the US, though certainly in the Obama White House--and a global process unlike any other is well underway. Will it reach its goal?

How Do You Solve a Problem Like ...

Convened in a Sound-of-Music setting by Germany's Angela Merkel, once known as the 'climate chancellor,' leaders of the G7 nations agreed yesterday to bring to an end the age of the fossil-fuel economy ... someday. The actual agreement calls for global greenhouse gas reductions of 40-70% from 2010 levels by 2050, with near complete elimination of fossil fuels by century's end. While some analysts called it a "symbolic boost," the announcement by some of the world's most powerful leaders adds momentum to the climate discussions that are intensifying in the run-up to Paris. Several features of yesterday's agreement are worth noting:

• Many have called the agreement a "diplomatic coup" for Merkel, who as environment minister in the 1990s played an important role in the Kyoto talks, but has been relatively quiet on the climate issue in recent years. Bringing Japan and Canada, whose governments border on climate denial,  to co-sign the agreement is being treated as big news on the international front.
• The actual agreement, on the other hand, may not be such big news. No mechanisms are cited. At the low end, 40% reductions by 2050 are hardly news at all, though the agreement urges countries to aim for the "upper end," i.e. a 70% reduction. Some observers consider that target within the range of a 2C temperature increase, regarded as tolerable by climate scientists, though others insist that near-elimination of fossil fuels by 2050 would be a safer goal. At the World Resources Institute spokesperson Jennifer Morgan was unequivocal: "You need to be [at total decarbonization] by 2050 for CO2 ... if you want a high chance of staying below 2C." At 350.org, May Boeve called the agreement a "signal to investors" rather than an actual remedy.
• On another key issue, the G7 leaders made no commitment at all to the Green Climate Fund, currently funded at $10 billion per year. In 2009 the G8 and other wealthy nations promised to fund it at $100 billion per year, and without some assurance of that funding, many observers feel the intended beneficiaries, the world's least developed and poorest nations, will be reluctant to sign on to a new agreement in Paris. As Kofi Annan said recently (see previous post), promises only matter if they are kept. Alone among the G7 leaders, Merkel has moved to double Germany's contribution. And the US?
• One small but salient detail from yesterday's agreement: the leaders promised to support an initiative in Paris to "promote increased ambition over time," i.e. to include regular reviews of progress, and a mechanism for ramping up national commitments, as the Paris agreement unfolds after 2020. As most observers doubt that a completely satisfactory agreement can be reached this year, building in a method for improving whatever agreement is made is seen as an important part of the larger international process. 

Is the G7's announcement yesterday good news then, or even news at all? Perhaps the best answer comes from corporate "environmental advisor" Tom Burke, who noted, "What really matters is what gets done in the real economy ... You're going to shift the needle of interest in the investing community away from oil and gas and towards renewables." In other words, it's the corporations, stupid, but has the G7 really gotten their attention?

Dear Readers

Dear Readers of this Blog,

I've been posting for 5 months now, 64 posts in all. Some dozens of you seem to be reading them--I  can't tell for sure--and I'm grateful for your interest. I hope you find the posts worthwhile. So now I want to take stock for a moment.

My goal in writing has been to increase interest and awareness in the climate crisis, in the political responses to it, and especially in the steps leading up to the UN's climate conference (COP21) in Paris this December. To achieve my goal for the blog, I feel at this point that 2 things need to happen, both with your help:

1) I would like to broaden my readership. You can help by sending the link--roadtoparis2015.blogspot.com-- to 1 or several people you think would enjoy reading it.

2) More importantly, I would like to see this blog become the site of active discussion because that degree of heightened engagement is sorely missing right now from our public sphere, as the US and other governments prepare their negotiating positions for Paris. Passive awareness of the climate issue is better than ignorance or indifference, but it's not enough. We all need to deepen and share our knowledge and points-of-view about this immensely complicated and urgent issue. Dialog, whether on this blog or elsewhere, is a good way to ratchet up our concern.

So I'm asking you to become an active reader by using the comment function to add your thoughts to mine. Just click on the "no comments" link at the bottom of each post for a comment box to appear. (Or maybe it will say "comments (1)" or (2) or (10) in which case you may be joining an ongoing conversation.)

You'll be able to read more of my thoughts as this blog proceeds. I look forward to reading yours.

Africa's Challenge

Under the signature of its chairman, Kofi Annan, the Africa Progress Panel (APP), a high-powered group of former African heads of state, public figures, and international business leaders, has added a strong African voice to the international conversation in advance of the Paris conference. In its annual Africa Progress Report, published yesterday, the APP lays out the challenge facing Africa and the world: can Africa's desperately needed economic development take place, not just without adding to the world's greenhouse gas problem, but can it establish prototypes for green development that will inspire the rest of the world? It sounds utopian, but the APP is joining others who see the climate crisis as a powerful driver toward economic justice, and not just remediation. How could this work?

Annan's executive summary points to a variety of solutions, both internal and external to Africa, that need to be brought together. He notes the internal corruption of utilities and finance markets in Africa, skewed to serve wealthy elites while 600 million Africans lack basic electricity. He also notes the massive subsidies still offered by wealthy nations for fossil fuel exploitation. While Africa has enormous untapped potentialities for renewable energy--solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro--it now depends on expensive and inefficient carbon-based energy for most of its modest needs. To fuel a green development surge in Africa, the APP estimates an investment of $55 billion would be needed annually for the next 15 years. Annan proposes that half of that sum could be raised internally by reforming tax collection and reducing fraud within existing African governmental and corporate structures. The rest would need to come from the Green Climate Fund or other international aid sources--or by transferring those billions of dollars in fossil-fuel subsidies to renewable development.

Does Africa matter? In one sense, no--Africa's carbon footprint is tiny, its geopolitical role minimal. Converting its economy and expanding it with renewable energy won't really address the urgent problem of greenhouse gas emissions, a problem caused by the wealthy developed nations and the 'emerging' economies of the G20, of which South Africa is the only African member. Africa didn't cause the climate problem, doesn't contribute much to it, and will not be the place where it is resolved.

But Africa IS the front-line continent for another dimension of the problem: climate justice. As Amman notes, "No region has done less to contribute to the climate crisis, but no region will pay a higher price for failure to tackle it." From the slave trade to colonialism to corporate exploitation of its weak political structures, Africa has been a chronic victim of the excesses of the capitalist economy. Drought and desertification, early effects of changing climate, are already taking a toll on Africa's development efforts. The dichotomy of climate is stark: the crisis is clearly the work of development that has served the wealthy nations and peoples, while the consequences--hunger and thirst, forced migration, devastating weather--will most strongly afflict the poor.

If we in the wealthy nations can discover our better natures, Africa could, in a few decades, contribute massively to the global economy using a new green infrastructure. If not, the African peoples will be the first--but not the last--to suffer from our short-sightedness. That's the African challenge, not just for Africa itself but for the world community as it meets, first at the Sustainable Development summit in New York this September, then in Paris in December. Will the United States be equal to that challenge?

Who Will Pay?

Two reports released in the last 2 days start to move beyond the rhetoric into the interesting details of global climate response. In short, the reports ask 'who will pay' for the massive investments needed to transform the world's energy sector and to mitigate the effects of climate changes that will happen in the meanwhile.

First, with regard to the Paris conference itself (COP21), here's how it works: each of the 195 nations involved is supposed to have submitted a national plan (INDC) for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Most of these plans are overdue, but some 30-odd national plans are on file, including the EU and G7 countries that account for 30% of global emissions and 40% of global GDP. So it becomes possible to evaluate--as the UNFCCC plans to do officially in the fall, before the Paris conference--just how the plans will affect the global goal of holding temperature increases at 2 degrees C. How do they look at this moment? According to the report by Climate Action Tracker, a report signed by 4 of the UN's most senior IPCC climate scientists, not so good. Metrics are complicated, but one way is to estimate at what point carbon saturation will produce temperature increases at 2C--considered the red-flag level for dangerous and irreversible climate change. Status quo projections put that moment at 2036. INDCs from the G7+EU countries so far will push that date back ... 2 years, to 2038. 'Insufficient' pledges from Russia, Canada, and the US in particular--and India and China as well--would imply temperature increases of 3-4 degrees C, a level called "catastrophic" by many climate scientists.

But that's the point of the UNFCCC process: to persuade all countries to put their cards on the table, see what they add up to, and plan from there. Clearly this first draft is unacceptable. Will 'peer pressure'--or just common sense--cause nations to tighten their proposals in advance of Paris? Or will the realization that the 2C goal is not even close to being met lead to post-Paris, post-2020 planning? As the UK's Lord Stern suggested in response to the Climate Action report, we might decide to use the Paris agreements as a "floor of ambition" on which to construct more aggressive plans. Will negotiators arrive in Paris with this intention?

Or will the whole process need to give way to something more urgent? Another IPCC author, Reto Knutti, commented that "global carbon budgets" would be a much more effective way to achieve climate security, but called it a "hard-sell"--harder than setting a 2C goal that no one thinks can be achieved. Perhaps the best use of studies like Carbon Action Tracker's is to alert us all to how much more will need to be done, once the UNFCCC makes clear how little current governments are prepared to do.

The second report is more straightforward. At the Copenhagen conference in 2009, leaders of the wealthy nations made a pledge to increase climate aid to poorer countries, a Green Climate Fund that would reach the impressive level of $100 billion per year by 2020. That funding would allow developing countries to implement clean-energy policies as well as mitigate the effects of climate change: floods, storms, drought, and so forth. Many observers believe that developing countries will sign onto the Paris agreement only if this Green Climate Fund shows promise of being fully funded.

So is it? Not really, but yesterday's report from the World Resources Institute shows how it might be achievable. Governments of developed countries will need to ramp up their contributions (from $17 billion to $31 billion), and development banks like the World Bank will also need to double their funding level to $28 billion. The remaining billions--and here's the most controversial part--would need to come from the private sector, whether in the from of co-investment or loans leveraged from the national and development bank funding. Finer minds than mine seem to feel this combination could yield as much as $137 billion per year, according to the Guardian's estimates, but under what conditions? And isn't that development bank money another form of taxpayer contribution from nations whose ratepayers have already shown a lack of enthusiasm for paying for this problem?

Envisioning the solution is a first step, and the WRI has done us a service by issuing this report. Bringing the wealthy nations of the world, their legislatures and corporations and international organizations to pay for it--that will be the next step, and at least some of that struggle will take place at the Paris conference. Or in the preparations for it--right now!--as countries prepare their negotiating positions.

Global Apollo: Can it Shoot the Moon?

The UK's special climate envoy, David King, and six other eminent British scientists, economists, and businessmen presented a report today that could offer dramatic support for efforts to reach a major climate agreement in Paris in December. They call their proposal 'Global Apollo' because it attempts to mirror the cost--$150 billion over 10years--and scope of the Apollo moon launch program--and because they hope to capture the can-do spirit of that heroic mission. The goal? To eliminate new coal-powered energy projects by making renewable energy "cheaper than coal in sunny parts of the world by 2020, and worldwide by 2025," according to analysts at The Carbon Brief . To achieve this ambitious goal the program hopes to gather government funding for new research in such areas as renewable energy storage and 'smart' grid design. From initial reports it was not clear whether the program intended to engage in implementation of enhanced sustainable technologies, or whether that enormous capital outlay would still need to come from national budgets, private capital, or the still underfunded Green Climate Fund.

Announcement of the report coincides with the Bonn Climate Change Conference, which opened yesterday under the auspices of the UNFCCC process with nearly 200 nations represented. The Bonn meeting is a technical one, streamlining documents from February's Geneva meeting in the hope of creating a workable agenda for Paris in December. Because it is easy for the massive bureaucratic process that is the UNFCCC to lose itself in details, the highly-publicized, media-friendly announcement--A Global Climate Moon-shot! the End of Big Coal!--provides a welcome surge, and gives the proposal some momentum in advance of next week's G-7 summit in Berlin, where the report will be formally presented, and funding requested. The UK, home base to the report's researchers and sponsors, has already announced financial support--intended to comprise .02% of GPD for the G-7 countries--but only if the other wealthy nations follow suit.

Still, questions remain whether this initiative can achieve all that its grandiose name and premise are promising. Deflecting new coal-based energy projects into solar and wind--by 2020!--would be a feat, especially given India's rapid exploitation of its coal resources, but even so, it fails to address the existing infrastructure for burning increasing quantities of the biggest carbon polluter for many decades to come. Carbon capture technologies are not part of Global Apollo, but perhaps they should be. Likewise the questions of how to implement rapidly at appropriate scale need to be addressed: the assumption is that Global Apollo's research will lead to price advantages for renewables, but even where this may already be true, market forces have not automatically responded with replacement renewables. Furthermore, interventions that decrease demand for coal without adjusting its price with carbon taxing may lower the price of coal and negate any price advantages for solar. By itself, Global Apollo is clearly not the whole solution, but in concert with other assistance programs and market adjustments, its research goals could certainly make an important contribution to the overall solution.

In political terms it will be really interesting to gauge the response to this proposal by the G-7 world leaders next week. The analogy to moon exploration puts an interesting light on what is a large, specific demand for climate funding. While not a panacea, this proposal--which is co-authored by Lord Stern and the Grantham Institute, one of the strongest voices in climate economics--represents exactly the kind of structural initiative that needs to be taking shape now, in advance of the Paris conference. Vague well-meaning promises need to turn into concrete, billion-dollar programs, and fast. Global Apollo is a welcome entrant into this arena.