Thank You, Pope Francis

What right does the Pope have to butt into public policy issues? What does he know about science, or economics, or any of that Real Men stuff? That's what candidate Jeb Bush wants to know, and a host of other embarrassed Catholic Republican politicians.

And it's a legitimate question: if we don't want the Pope's opinions on, say, reproductive health and procreation to influence our policies, why do we care about his ideas on climate and ecology?

First, he's using real science, drawing on his respected (Lutheran!) advisor from the Potsdam Institute Joachim Schellnhuber, who also advises Chancellor Merkel on climate matters. First assessments put the Pope's text on the cautious side of the scientific discussion. What to make of the claim (Bush's, among others') that Popes should stick to theology and leave science alone, as if theology dealt with some world other than our own? Catholic teaching has embraced science, ill or well, for 150 years, because it insists that religious faith is practiced in living, in the actual world, not alongside it.

But more especially, Pope Francis has established himself as a moral teacher, perhaps the best Pope in this role since John XXIII. And what he brings to the global conversation--more effectively than the most astute climate scientist or economist--is its moral dimension. Climate change is a technical problem, which needs to be addressed with technical changes both to the economics and the physics of energy use. But it is also a moral problem: the climate crisis is part of the problem of global inequality, the disproportionate appropriation of the world's goods by elites. The carbonized atmosphere is the largest imaginable instance of this justice deficit: the entire planet dangerously polluted, inflicting drought, desertification, hunger, and ultimately migration on the earth's poorest dwellers, mainly to benefit the excessive profits and consumption of the richest few. The Papal Encyclical is perhaps the most powerful framing yet of this moral problem of climate justice.

Of course like candidate Bush, the other minions of the Koch brothers, and certain disgruntled Catholic conservatives, we can reject Francis's teaching. He has no automatic claim to our allegiance. But he does claim our attention. He'll seize it again in September when he addresses Congress and then the UN general assembly. He speaks powerfully, and in this instance, credibly. He has made himself a valuable ally, and that alone is justification for the role he is claiming with this encyclical.

Common Sense on Energy

The International Energy Agency issued a pre-Paris report yesterday which is both clarifying and distressing in its implications, but in any case worth looking at closely. The IEA, an independent agency founded in the oil shock days of the 1970s, includes as members most of the world's wealthy nations, and speaks authoritatively on matters of global energy resources. Here are some highlights:

• Context: The IEA's executive director, renowned energy economist Fatih Birol, has stated (as have many others) that allowing greenhouse gas emissions to peak in 2030 (the target of many INDC plans submitted so far) will lead to "catastrophic" temperatures well above the dangerous 2C level. The IEA urges instead that the Paris agreement point toward peak emissions by 2020, and goes on to show how this could be done.
• Their biggest proposal is to speed up the conversion, in massive coal-burning economies, from outmoded and wasteful coal plants to modern cleaner ones, while banning the construction of new (cheaper) old-fashioned coal plants. They call this a 'bridge' plan en route to fully renewable energy down the road.   
• Other items in this 'Bridge Scenario' include increasing investment in renewable power generation by 50% (to $400 billion per year); regulating oil and gas production to prevent the spillage of methane, an unregulated practice that now causes huge methane pollution, a major source of greenhouse gas; and the phasing out of fossil-fuel subsidies by governments world-wide, now estimated to amount to $5 trillion annually. 

Is the IEA correct that these are feasible ways to accelerate the work of greenhouse gas reduction? You bet. Will they hold temperatures at acceptable levels? No one quite knows, but peaking at 2020 is a whole lot safer than 2030. 

The IEA also offered a set of three other 'pillars' to guide the Paris deliberations. These useful suggestions include: 1) endorsing the long-term goal of a carbon-free global economy (as the G7 leaders did last week); 2) instituting 5-year reviews starting in 2020 to check on progress, nation by nation, as a mechanism for 'raising ambitions'; and setting up a global tracking system to measure worldwide energy transition.  

So the IEA's report, though it breaks no real new ground, is a useful and rigorous summary of what the Paris conference might sensibly agree to. But is there political will to institute these proposals? That's the big question. And here's an anecdotal answer:

Last week, in a little-noted move, the US House Appropriations Committee removed the $3 billion the Obama administration is seeking to fund the Green Climate Fund for developing nations (already, at 3% of the globally agreed total, a disappointingly small sum). Instead, House Republicans proposed using the money for security at facilities like the Benghazi consulate (take that, candidate Clinton!), and proposed releasing funding for worldwide coal-based(!!) projects. Political will? Here at home, not so good.

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?