This is the Way the World Ends

Some day, a generation or two from now, when some rare archival historian seeks to answer the question, 'What were they thinking?' or 'How could they (meaning us, our generation) have let this happen?', that archivist may happen on this article from today's Guardian, or they may follow the link back to this one, from the Times last fall. And they will have unearthed a significant piece of the story.

The major players are on stage: the EU Commission, headed by craven right-winger José Manuel Barroso, and supported by largely center-right parties with a working majority in the EU Parliament; the renewable energy lobby, led by the photovoltaic manufacturers and supported by a generation of environmental advocates; the nuclear power mega-corporations, responding to Germany's moratorium by trying to advance their 'clean' carbon-free technologies into the breach; and the European petroleum companies, now increasingly natural gas, i.e. fracking and Russian import companies, led by Shell apparently, and using the powerfully skeptic UK Tory government as its stalking horse.

At issue was the design of the EU's proposal for the UN's Paris conference this December, which many regard as the last-gasp hope for an international agreement to limit greenhouse gas this side of a catastrophic tipping point. The EU's proposal was regarded with more than interest by all parties, first because in the aggregate the EU is the world's largest economy, and also because, of the three large economies--the US and China are its only 'peers'--only the EU offers even modest support for the environmentalist view. That EU proposal was submitted to the UNFCCC in draft form this February, but its shape was largely determined last October (just before the Barroso Commission left office). In today's Guardian we read--courtesy of documents obtained by a freedom-of-information request--just how that agreement was shaped.

Setting aside many technicalities, the large question was: will the proposal set energy requirements for each of the 28 member states, mandating 28 initiatives to reduce carbon emissions and thus urge a massive shift over 15 years to renewables (or nuclear, or conservation, or some combination of these)? Or would it set an EU-wide goal without specifying any particular national responsibilities, thus urging ... inertia, finger-pointing, and a continuation of the status quo. Led by Shell and the oil lobby, the latter interests won, and did so with a two-pronged communications strategy: on the one hand, Shell declares itself to be wholly in favor of carbon transfer markets and other mechanisms to advance the renewable agenda (while it continues to open up arctic drilling sites, encourage fracking, and plans to enlarge the natural gas infrastructure). On the other, it promotes the flexibility of individual national sovereignties, as the UK insists, so that carbon-prone economies will be able to fend off any external pressures any time soon.

So that, my children, is how the world's largest economy, the 'progressive' one, managed to avoid taking the bold step that would have set a benchmark for the Paris conference. That is how other, less high-minded nations like Australia and Canada will be able to see themselves in line with international standards. That is how no-nothing politicians like Senator Imhofe will be able to argue that serious energy conversion in the US will put us at a disadvantage in global competition--and when he says it, the Chinese and Indian policy-makers smile and nod in agreement. In short, there are many players, many moments in this drama, many reasons for the impending failure in Paris, but the scene in Brussels last October, now laid out in documentary splendor by our tenacious friends at The Guardian, should be seen as a decisive one.

France Steps Up

Just a few quick notes about the op-ed in yesterday's Times by French foreign minister Laurent Fabius:

1) First point of note: it appeared. The Times has not been front-and-center on the Climate Change issue, but that was Fabius's topic, and the editors gave him a major forum.

2) Fabius was speaking as Chair of the UN Climate Change conference in Paris, that is, he is treating what could be a nominal role as a major responsibility, and putting France forward as a leader in this international effort--a position that may increase the weight of the conference, or at least increase the diplomatic stakes.

3) More substantively, he opens the discussion to adaptation, a touchy subject in that it accepts the premise that 'it's already too late--change is here and we have to deal with it.' Many agree with that premise, though, and adaptation should and will take its place, alongside  abatement and mitigation, as the international conversation advances. I'll come back to those useful terms in a forthcoming post, as I examine philosopher Dale Jamieson's take on the status of this discussion.

No Room in the Lifeboats

In view of the catastrophe in the Mediterranean, where more than 800 trafficked African migrants died in shipwreck, I report the following statistics and prognoses, from the UN's 2013 IPCC assessment report, culled by French Left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon on his blog today:

• Climate change will indirectly increase the risk of violent conflicts such as civil wars and inter-group confrontation while intensifying underlying causes of conflict such as poverty;
• 40% of the earth will experience desertification, affecting 2 billion people;
• Global production will decrease by a net 2% per decade, despite all the offsetting technical advances, and in the face of a need for increases in food production of 14% per decade;
• In 2013 22 million people were displaced from their homes by climate change, a small harbinger of the climate migrations to come.

As the EU prepares to strengthen its border controls while reducing by 2/3 its rescue funding, as Americans in the southwest and elsewhere clamor for stronger fences and border patrols, and Australia deploys its navy to turn back all migrants from its territorial waters, we have to wonder what it would be like to live in a world where disasters like the one off the coast of Libya are an everyday occurrence.

Might the World's Governments Flunk the Climate Exam?

Anyone who thinks that international regulation is our best hope for containing climate change should be noticing as various nations submit the first drafts of their proposed policy initiatives (called INDCs--don't ask) to the UN's FCCC, in advance of the December conference in Paris. And any non-expert (like me) who wants to evaluate these proposals has a friend in the Climate Action Tracker website, which attempts to align these proposals on a common 'fairness' scale, where fairness tries to account for both the net proposed greenhouse gas reduction and the particular capabilities of each nation. In that way the CAT website mirrors and anticipates the evaluation the UNFCCC will itself be making later this year, as it tries to measure and align the full set of 195 national INDCs.

But with 6 or so nations already responding (including the EU, Russia, and Japan--major players--as well as Switzerland, Norway and Mexico), how does it look? Well, not so great. The CAT's ratings system includes categories of 'sufficient' (i.e. if all nations met this standard, the odds of holding temperature rise at 2C would be strong); 'medium' (not good enough for 2C, but might combine with more 'sufficient' plans to meet that goal); and 'inadequate' (if that's the best these nations are willing to do, then we'll all cook with increases of 3-4 degrees C or worse).

So how are we doing? The various Europeans are hovering at sub-par levels rated 'medium,' while the Russians and Japanese are 'inadequate,' for a variety of reasons explained on the website. Both of course claim to do better, but dubious counting strategies fail to meet CAT's standards.

Is this analysis the last word in official scorekeeping on this issue? Surely not--there are too many variables and interests, and no doubt many other evaluations will be forthcoming. Is CAT a good start? I think so, especially where at this relatively early date there is still time for international 'peer pressure' to weigh in on the 'inadequate' plans and bump these governments up to higher, more promising standards. Of the most urgent candidates for such pressure, India and  China rank highest, closely followed by ... US.

How Green is Green?

Who's that lady all dressed in green? Is this the next President of the United States, who will preside over the implementation of Paris Climate Conference agreements to reduce greenhouse gas for good? Or is she the accomodationist Secretary of State whose cozy relationship with fossil fuel corporations and sovereign state producers will carry over into the White House? It's a complicated story for sure, but this article in today's Guardian offers some useful background in sorting out the Candidate's probable stance. A good sign: her leading advisor, John Podesta, has already made gestures to put the climate issue high on her agenda. A sure bet: she will be preferable on this issue to whichever of the climate change-denying, anti-science Republicans runs against her--but at this late stage in the gathering climate crisis, is being more sensible than Ted Cruz or Rand Paul good enough?

Good News/Bad News

Recents events suggest we are finally getting a handle on this climate thing. Current data suggests this climate thing is spinning further and further out of control. Take your pick.

Good news: the US's officially measured greenhouse gas emissions declined slightly in the past year.

Bad news: a major reason was conversion of power plants to natural gas, but the fracking that lowers gas prices and drives the conversion is probably causing considerable (but unmeasured) methane leakage, offsetting the gains.

Good news: Obama's use of EPA regulations to close coal-burning power plants will help the US meet its (modest) UNFCCC emission reduction goals for 2025.

Bad news: Led by the attorney general of West Virginia, numerous states have brought suit to challenge the EPA's jurisdiction. That suit will be heard in the DC federal court of appeals--one of the most conservative in the nation--with the likely outcome to be decided in the highly politicized US Supreme Court. Even the threat of overturning the EPA regs will have a serious dampening effect on the ongoing UNFCCC process.

Good news: Russia, a recalcitrant state with respect to climate issues, has filed its proposal for emission reductions with the UNFCCC, and it's in line with expected standards: a 20-30% reduction over 1990 levels by 2030.

Bad news: much of Russia's 'plan' includes counting its already existing forest reserves as carbon sinks, thus inflating its claims and doing very little to add to decarbonization going forward.

And so on. There are so many fronts to the climate change issue, so many factors and data points and disputed data points and different ways of seeing both the problem and the solutions that it is almost impossible to get a clear fix on where we stand. That's one reason I am so invested in the Paris conference: after the 195 states have submitted their individual plans, and before the conference itself, UN officials plan to evaluate the aggregate effect of all these somewhat asymmetric and inherently confusing plans. That should bring some clarity on public-sector response (assuming governments comply with their own plans, which given the vagaries of politics is far from evident). Independent market factors--such as the financial collapse of 2008, which did more than any government to reduce emissions--represent another crucial, unpredictable variable. And imperfectly understood climate causation is another. In short, we are swimming in data of many sorts, with some clear directionals in mind, but where the tides will take us is anybody's guess.

On Loss and Gain in the Climate Struggle

I have spent many hours over the last few days at the Harvard divestment protest rallies, and the experience has been an intense one, at times almost too much to bear. On the one hand it is inspiriting to stand with a sizable group of people, listening to speakers, all of whom share an understanding of the magnitude of the crisis we face. So often, among other people, even highly educated and informed ones, this simply isn't the case. On the other hand, though, the sense that this awareness is shared by a small and ineffectual minority is hard to ignore while a powerful university and its self-important members carry on their business as usual, hardly slowing down to notice the ragtag assembly that has kept a few administrators from their offices, but has apparently made no difference at all to the University's plans for investing its immense wealth. To engage with this issue is to immerse oneself in loss--of which more later in this post.

But first, a few vignettes from the protest:

On Wednesday the speakers represented faith communities--Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, seminarians and ministers, visionaries. The most singular speaker was a Pacific Islander, one of the Pacific Climate Warriors who last November used their traditional canoes to blockade the coal port of Newcastle, Australia. This woman related how she had at the age of 40 suddenly found the opportunity to become a mother, agreeing to adopt a baby at birth. The delivery was scheduled for several weeks after the blockade but it arrived early, so this woman was watching her baby's birth by skype while Australian police were brutally clearing her and the other Warriors from the waterway. "The baby looked so calm," she recalled, "while I was bawling." Her husband and mother were there to help with the birth and the baby, and when she told them how sorry she was to be absent, they told her, No, you are just where you need to be, where this baby needs you to be at this moment.

Today felt less dramatic as I joined a 'blockade' of sorts in front of Harvard's administrative building, University Hall. The students who have organized these protests are warriors too, and they have been tireless all week, sleeping outside to maintain their blockade, keeping up a chanting, chatting, orating, giddy presence in Harvard Yard. But the administration has simply reiterated its refusal to negotiate divestment and withdrawn, leaving the students little to push against, while the vast majority of their fellow students and teachers carry on with their routines, visibly indifferent to the whole business. The blockade today was spirited in its way--a delegation from Montreal, who are waging the same struggle at McGill University, brought international solidarity to the picket line and enlivened things a bit--but I couldn't help feeling some sadness, not with the Divest Harvard activists but with their isolation from the main currents of University life. Theirs is a prophetic witness, but it's getting late for prophecy.

Which brings me back to loss. My other absorption this week has been with Dale Jamieson's remarkable book Reason in a Dark Time (2014), a book I learned about from Jonathan Franzen's New Yorker piece and mentioned a few posts ago. Jamieson is an academic philosopher, a rigorous thinker who has set out to explore the question of how and why we human beings have failed so completely, despite all the urgent warning signs, to address the climate change crisis. Not are failing but have failed: the change is upon us, and Jamieson knows better than more casual observers how far we are from any meaningful remedies. There is some sadness, then, in this book, but a certain comfort as well, as he explores the long trajectory of scientific discovery--a path necessarily long, given the complexity of climate and its newness as a science, though disastrously elongated by the deliberate efforts to obfuscate and undermine legitimate research. That too is a predictable consequence of the ignorance, greed, and narrow self-interest that are woven into our human tapestry. I haven't finished Jamieson's book--he promises to suggest some mitigating actions, though no 'solutions' as such--but I find that the effort to examine quite closely all the difficulties embedded in our systems of science, economics, politics and ethics, all the ways we have fallen short even when applying our strongest intellectual tools to this problem, makes it seem less of a debacle, an atrocity, and more of a tragic condition, another dimension to our already tragic and tenuous grip on things. As one of the faith leaders-the Buddhist, I believe it was--encouraged us, we need to address this problem, this crisis, not with anger but with love. I'm trying, and Jamieson's lucid explanations make that easier to do.

Why divest? Why Harvard?

The numbers are simple: X amount of coal, oil, or gas, consumed, produces Y amount of additional CO2 in the atmosphere, which causes Z degrees of temperature rise. Scientists discuss and debate all the particulars of that equation: just what damages will result from how many degrees of temperature rise, and how much carbon emission produces what effects. But no one seriously disputes the framework of the problem.

Likewise the argument of "leave it in the ground" is an inevitable corollary. Of known fossil fuel reserves, any consumption beyond 20-30% will produce catastrophic results. This number varies too: exploration and discovery of new reserves drives up the fraction--70-80% of reserves--that must not be used. Transfers from dirty coal to clean, from coal to gas, and so forth, might arguably drive those numbers down, but no one can seriously dispute that vast amounts--trillions of dollars worth of available fossil fuel deposits--must be written off, unused and unusable, to avert a species-threatening catastrophe. This is scientific knowledge, and only an irrational fool could dispute it.

Except, of course, that the mega-corporations that produce and market fossil energy DO dispute it: both in their official corporate communications, and more seriously in the fact that they continue to open up exploration sites and increase their reserves, as if those new reserves would of course be usable, right up to the brink of total disaster. And that's where divestment enters the story. Divesting from carbon-fuel producers is a symbolic act, modeled on the South African apartheid campaign, a way of saying "No, your way of doing business is unacceptable to the world community." It's also a practical--though still largely symbolic--way to withhold capital from corporations who would use it to open up new fossil-fuel exploration. "Not in my name" is a powerful moral statement.

But why Harvard (and Yale and Oxford and Swarthmore and many other prestigious institutions)? Isn't Harvard the site of useful research, both scientific and political, the sort of place where the many climate discrepancies might be sorted out, where thorny questions of energy economics and policy change are studied? Doesn't Harvard make a strong claim on Veritas=Truth? Yes, but it also makes a rigorous separation between 'Truth', researched fact, and practical action in the world. President Faust is adamant that Harvard's role is narrowly educational; meanwhile, its endowment, the largest academic endowment in the world, increased its fossil fuel holdings BY A FACTOR OF 7, i.e. they bought 7 times as much carbon-related stock as they previously owned, just last fall--at the very moment when the UN was convening a global summit on the climate crisis, and 400,000 of us were marching in the streets of New York for climate solutions.

Harvard's administration believes in a radical disconnect between the truth of its research and the force of its institutional presence in the finance markets. Harvard's administration is wrong. There is no time left for such sophistic distinctions. If global climate disruption is an impending disaster--and we know it is--then every institution with discretionary control over $39 billion of capital assets (or any amount, really) needs to step up and take responsibility. And Harvard in particular, whose administration has inherited 380 years or so of probity, whose Veritas 'brand' is the gold standard for academic prestige world-wide, who claims to represent all that is good and great in the world of science and reason--that Harvard cannot be Harvard and maintain its duplicity. It must not invest its resources in contradiction to its values. Harvard's administration needs to listen to its students, and tell them "Thank you" for saving Harvard from its own worst tendencies.

Harvard Heat Week: Day 1

Student climate activists with Divest Harvard began their week-long protest today by blockading the offices of President Faust and the Harvard Corporation in Harvard Yard. Today's theme was 'Alumni,' and a hundred or so graying activists from previous campaigns joined in supporting the students, now in their third year  of demanding that the world's richest university remove fossil fuel investments from its endowment portfolio. Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and Harvard '82, set the tone when he recalled how President Eliot declared in 1869 that it would take "many generations" to determine whether educating women made sense. Veterans of Harvard's South African divestment campaign noted that Harvard was among the last major institutions to get on board, preferring a nominal policy of 'constructive engagement' that in practice meant supporting the status quo while carrying on no meaningful engagement. It is clearly fanciful to imagine that its shares of petroleum stocks do anything other than fund the destructive expansion of those industries.

One speaker quoted Thoreau "Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine." He recognized an audience member, a Harvard Divinity School student recently released from federal prison after serving two years for disrupting a petroleum rights auction on public lands: life as "counter-friction."

Within the University community, alumni are organizing to withhold gifts from the University. A Divestment Fund has been created, and alumni signed cards pledging donations to that fund, which will revert to Harvard only when it divests from fossil fuel corporations. Some dozens of alumni were planning to sit-in at the Harvard Alumni Affairs office in the afternoon, an act of civil disobedience for which arrests were expected. More counter-friction.

Harvard's administration has been adamant that endowment portfolios will be exempt from policy considerations, even one as morally urgent as climate change. President Faust has instead cited the University's role in supporting research, even though, as several speakers noted, the endowment funds support spurious pseudo-research by large petroleum corporations intent on obfuscating the science of climate change. After Heat Week plans were announced, Harvard arranged a panel discussion for this afternoon, with an array of well-known scientists and moderated by popular talk-show host Charlie Rose, presumably to dramatize its role in advancing scientific inquiry. McKibben and others suggested that decades after climate science pointed to the growing crisis, it may be time for concrete action, rather than more panel discussion. Others noted with some appreciation Harvard's ability to convene experts such as presidential science advisorJohn Holdren or IPCC co-chair Christopher Field. The panel event is a classic instance of Harvard strategy to reframe the question more favorably, while the substantive issue of divestment remains out of sight.

Meanwhile at the rally outside Harvard's Massachusetts Hall another expert had the final say: former Colorado senator Tim Wirth, who in 1988 invited NASA climate scientist James Hansen to present the first comprehensive testimony on climate change to the US Senate. As a career politician, Harvard overseer, and environmental advocate with a distinctly patrician air, Senator Wirth made clear that "we aren't here to beat up Harvard--that would be a waste of our time." Rather, he noted, the goal was to help President Faust out of the "corner" where she finds herself. His suggestion: an open public consultation, such as MIT recently conducted, where the divestment issue could get a public hearing and perhaps reach some consensus. Wirth's remarks sounded oddly conciliatory after the more urgent messages of speakers who preceded him--his were the words of a pragmatist, a compromiser who understands that in politics no one gets everything they want. Given the powerful forces within the Harvard Corporation and the larger financial class they represent, perhaps Wirth is right, that 'beating up' is futile and procedural niceties necessary. But will the melting ice caps and rising temperatures wait for the orderly process Wirth suggests? Civil disobedience raises the volume. Maybe dire circumstances make that the right move.

The Heat is On

Heat Week began today in Cambridge as activists convened by 350.org gather to demand that Harvard University join the movement to divest its vast endowment funds from fossil fuel corporations. Though I was in transit and had to miss the kick-off festivities, I'll be in Harvard Yard tomorrow for Alumni Day, and all week as religious leaders, student leaders, and climate scientists hold demonstrations, teach-ins and vigils to bring Harvard over to the divestment side. Given the size of the endowment, the prestige of the University, and the timing--clearly public awareness of the issue is building as we head toward the decisive meeting in Paris later this year--this week-long rally and protest should mark a bold step forward for the Climate Change movement. Stay tuned to this space as I report on the events--or better yet if you're in the neighborhood tomorrow, join in: 9am, Harvard Yard.

Saint Franzen Preaches to the Beasts

Jonathan Franzen is a notable novelist, naturalist, and journalist, so his recent critique in the New Yorker ("Carbon Capture," 4/6/15), not just of the Climate Change movement but of a whole world-view associated with it, deserves some critical attention. In brief, Franzen tells us to avert our gaze from the dismal future, appreciate what's in front of us here, now, and try to preserve what we can of our natural world--even if the whole shebang is going to blow before century's end. His message is therapeutic in a way, but is it responsible, or even tenable?

He begins with a particular gripe: after the National Audubon Society declared climate change to be the "greatest threat" to bird species in this century, a blogger on bird-related issues for the Minneapolis Star Tribune drew the false inference that lesser (but quite real) concerns like the reflective glass in a newly built stadium that kills thousands of birds no longer really matter--mean "nothing," as he crudely put it. Of course it's perfectly reasonable to believe that both the short-term and the long-term dangers matter, the dead birds today, the dislocated species tomorrow, both signaling our need to get involved.

But Franzen prefers to see this story as a parable of something larger. Drawing on the work of philosopher Dale Jamieson (Reason in a Dark Time) he examines the ethical implications of what he (following Jamieson) considers a hopeless, desperate eschatology: climate change has already happened, it will inevitably get worse, nothing can plausibly arrest it. This being the case, our only ethical choice is to adjust to living within its new paradigm. Birds will: unlike the Audubon Society, Franzen believes the adaptability of birds will serve them in their new environments, and he paints a surprisingly sanguine picture of how bird species in a warmer North America "may well become more diverse."

In any case it doesn't matter because we are doomed: following Jamieson, Franzen notes how poorly adapted the human brain is to considering longer term matters such as the survival of one's grandchildren, how vast and intangible the climate and energy questions are, how little any of us can do, given our "0.0000001 per-cent contribution" to emissions. Democracy is a system for marshaling only the most nakedly short-term self-interest of voters, and anyhow, a modest middle-class American life-style already produces way more CO2 than is tolerable as a global average. "Replacing your incandescent lightbulbs," as the Audubon folks helpfully suggest, just won't do it--though Franzen fails to even consider how using fossil-free renewable energy to generate electricity renders the type of light bulb irrelevant, and and how full-scale energy conversion would permit middle-class America to persist in its affluence without climate-based destruction.

Indeed, Franzen prefers to think that no aspect of the problem--"global governance, market failure, technological challenge, social justice"--can be successfully addressed. He sets aside some notionally contestable factors--for example, that"fossil-fuel corporations sponsor denialists and buy elections"--as somehow beside the point, and the possibility of collective action--of the 350.org sort, for example--seems not to occur to this writer, absorbed as he is in the dilemmas of the atomized homeowner and citizen. Why are such potential solutions not worth considering? Because, as Franzen hastens to observe, we are in the grip of something too big to fight, namely Protestant Guilt. We need global warming, we need to believe we have irrevocably polluted our Eden, because it confirms our sinfulness, and brings on the punishment we deserve. What can we do instead? Embrace the alternative, Franciscan vision: "helping something you love, something right in front of you."

Franzen goes on to describe some remarkable projects that do just that: projects in habitat reclamation, the creation of sustainable agriculture to compete with slash-and-burn rainforest exploitation, the loving care of 'wildness' wherever it has been preserved. Does it make sense to engage in such environmental restoration when the whole global environment is poised on the brink of climatic changes such as it perhaps hasn't seen for eons? Franzen, unlike the scientists and policy makers desperately trying to achieve international consensus at the Paris conference, accepts those changes as a "done deal," and yet he insists that the work of environmental restoration must go forward. What else can we do? I admire both his pursuit as a journalist of these stories, hidden away in the Amazon lowlands or the Costa Rican forest, and even more so I admire the perseverance of the indigenous peoples, scientists, and NGO staffers who are doing what they can. Preserving what one can of biodiversity, reversing human despoliation, these are useful for the earth and for our souls. But isn't the attempt to limit the extent of climate change useful too, even if it may be too little too late? Are we so sure it's a 'done deal'?

I feel a bond of sympathy with Franzen's anger, his impatience with simplistic nostrums, his attraction for the real work of dedicated ecologists in the field, whether indigenous farmers or university researchers. But I am distressed that he is ready to concede the larger climate issue, and consign our efforts to the ephemeral sphere, token acts of kindness while waiting for the end. We need both sorts of intervention, all at once, local conservation and global energy conversion, now, tomorrow, for as long as it takes. I haven't read Jamieson's ethical treatise yet, but I am ready to insist that calling ours a "dark time" will not by itself shed more light.

The Battle is Joined

Yesterday President Obama met the March 31 deadline (most countries have needed an extension), and submitted the US's greenhouse gas reduction plan to the UNFCCC. The plan, which follows the agreement announced in Beijing last fall, is a modest one: 26-28% reductions from 2005 levels by 2025 (the EU measures its 40% by 2030 against 1990 levels--a significant difference). The Times treated the announcement as a back-page story, while environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth pointed out that the proposal is far too modest to meet the overarching goal of arresting temperature increases at 2 degrees C.

But the real story is the reaction of Republicans in the US Congress. This submission marks the start of an epic battle. Majority Leader McConnell has declared the US approach--depending on executive regulatory actions independent of Congress--"illegal" and probably unconstitutional. Along with Senator Imhofe, chairman of Environment and Public Works and the Senate's most notorious climate change denier, McConnell and their allies warned the UN to "proceed with caution" since the US commitments were unreliable, unratifiable, and would be overturned by Congress. Missouri's Senator Blunt has already introduced legislation that would require Senate confirmation for any agreements reached in Paris. In short, as with Iran, the Republican Congressional party is trying to precipitate a constitutional crisis while undermining the capacity of the President and executive branch to proceed with its international commitments to mitigate climate change.

Can the Republicans sow enough doubt in international circles to undermine the Paris conference? That is surely their goal. They understand that the Paris conference is the point of no return. They sense they can bring the American people with them in this insane joy ride Their Presidential candidate in 2016 will no doubt attempt to inhibit the Democratic nominee from supporting further greenhouse gas reductions, or savage her (or him) for taking a responsible stand. This is a battle with enormous consequences. Are we ready for it? Can we generate enough support for science, reason, and the future to turn back the truly dark forces lining up behind ignorance, indifference, and short-term gain? I don't think we can afford to fail.