Brazil's Climate Challenge

Brazil is not just one of the 195 nations participating in the UN Paris conference. As one of the largest and most rapidly developing economies in the world, Brazil stands for--and may speak for--a crucially important category of countries whose populations and energy use will expand in coming decades, pushing up greenhouse gas levels no matter what the wealthy nations do. For that reason it is worth looking closely at the vagaries of Brazil's national plan (INDC) just filed on Monday with the UNFCCC. Some highlights and complexities:

• Brazil promises a net reduction of GHG emissions of 37% over 2005 levels by 2025, with greater reductions by 2030. In one sense this is no news at all: it has already reduced by 41%, so this proposal actually envisions a small net increase.
• Nuances count: Brazil is the first rapidly developing country to file a plan for its entire economy instead of making proposals for certain sectors. As such its plan commands respect, and promotes Brazil's leadership of this important group of countries. (South Africa is another, whose filing was concurrent with Brazil's.) By using a 2025 target date, with more reductions to follow by 2030, Brazil is also advancing its proposal for 5-year reviews, a really important article to include in the Paris agreement, since all agree that it will not by itself be adequate.
• Deforestation: Brazil's stewardship of major portions of the Amazon rain forest may be its most significant card to play. Its steep reduction in GHG emissions over the last 10 years is attributable mainly to its crackdown on illegal forest clearance. The small increase in its INDC plan reflects a small upturn in deforestation, and the resulting release of carbon, caused by recent relaxation of forestry controls.  Brazil's hydro-driven, highly renewable energy sector is a great asset, but its forests are a 2-edged sword: a great resource, one of the world's best carbon sinks, but also a great temptation for every developer and government agent to exploit.
• And why all that deforestation? Look in the mirror, America, and wipe that ketchup off your face--it's our appetite for cheap burgers that makes the market for those Amazon-basin cattle ranchers, but no one seems to be holding us accountable.

Is Brazil's assumption of leadership in the UNFCCC process important? Yes--the pivotal role of the rapidly developing nations, both to contain their own emissions and broker agreements between richer and poorer states, is one of the key dynamics of any global agreement. Is Brazil exercising wise leadership? The mixed results of its forest stewardship point both ways, but yes--Brazil is taking its role seriously. Is it enough? NO--but neither are the rest of the world's proposals. The challenge for the US, China, the EU and the other major players is to keep the Brazils moving in the right direction--and to inspire them by making greater efforts themselves. That's a lot of challenge for all of us here in Denial-land.

Humans at the Crossroads

As I mentioned last post, the climate change conversation, as it becomes more intense in anticipation of the Paris conference, has also taken on a greater breadth, to the point where the climate crisis and our collective response to it becomes a conversation about human values and human civilization. This is obviously an inexhaustibly huge topic, but I want to look at two particular directions this vast discussion is taking:

1) Markets and Morality. We have Pope Francis to thank for bringing this issue to public scrutiny. Is the 'free market' system to blame for environmental degradation? Can the market offer solutions? The pope has been taken to task for challenging the efficacy of carbon exchange markets--which in fact have proven more useful for speculation as the pope says than for decarbonization--but that technical question hides the larger one. Is the quest for perpetual growth, profit, consumption, and expansive wealth compatible with environmental responsibility? In this era dominated by market logic,  have we lost touch with what environmental scientists call the eco-system and the pope calls Creation? Will the urgent need for climate mitigation and adaptation require us to set aside the profit imperative and increased consumption, transfer resources to the poorest and neediest, and rethink our relationship to nature? Francis makes clear the moral imperatives to build relations of solidarity between rich and poor, to accommodate immigrants, and support the victims of climate injustice. Now we have to determine whether to accept those imperatives--or continue in the present direction of widening inequality, environmental degradation, perpetual conflict, and tbe brutalization of human relationships.

2) Technology and Ecology. Much of the environmentalist response to the climate crisis has been ecologically informed: walk more softly on the earth, convert to renewable or sustainable systems, resist the impulse to growth and concentrated wealth, find means to share more and consume less. In contrast to this approach, though, some scientists have urged technological fixes that would leave much of the rest of the world-system intact: generating nuclear energy, launching reflective particles to reflect solar rays out of the atmosphere, seeding the ocean with iron to capture carbon. This orientation, often called eco-modernism and supported notably by the Breakthrough Institute, envisions a future very different from the ecologically informed one. Concentration of humans in megalopolises while more of the earth reverts to wilderness, heavy dependence on nuclear energy, fully industrialized agriculture--a science fiction world governed by technocratic solutions and an overarching belief that science and technology can solve our problems.

These schematic differences may really translate into a single choice. Because, despite right-thinking declarations to the contrary, the market forces deployed by global corporations are more likely to endorse capital-intensive technologies that preserve the status quo than to support the ecological balance that limits growth, writes off vast fossil-fuel assets, and redistributes resources to the poor. Those moral imperatives to respect and support the poor, as the pope has made clear, are more compatible with the shared, restrained, creation-centered economics of a post-capitalist world. The past 30 years have given rise to the mistaken idea that there are no choices, that there is just one rational, market-driven world system. The climate crisis, along with the recent financial collapse and Great Recession, have made alternatives seem advisable. The question now seems open, the choice waiting to be made. Resistance to climate change may offer the means to rebuild a global civilization more humane than our present one.

Will Republicans Scuttle the Paris Conference?

Today I have some larger, even civilizational thoughts on my mind. Inspired by the Pope's speeches to Congress and the UN (and the renewed attention to his climate encyclical), and also by the polemic cited by George Monbiot in yesterday's Guardian about the eco-modernists (about whom I have written several times), I'm feeling that the climate question is becoming the occasion for some really interesting examination about just what the values of our civilization are or should be. Big questions--and I do intend to tackle them very soon.

First, though, I want to signal a question which, though crucial to the success of the Paris conference, is much more straightforward--even simple. Here are the basics, drawing on this dispatch from Reuters:

• Many of the world's poorer or less 'developed' countries hold the wealthy, industrialized nations responsible for the climate crisis--logically enough, since those mostly Western, fully 'developed' nations are the ones who emitted most of that pesky greenhouse gas over several centuries.
• Therefore, in the course of the UNFCCC process and notably at Copenhagen 6 years ago, the less developed nations insisted that the wealthy ones take responsibility for funding a Green Climate Fund to assist the poorer countries in energy conversion and adaptation measures which they would otherwise find difficult to pay for. The US, like other G-8 nations, signed onto that agreement.
• The actual numbers: the Green Climate Fund is to be funded at $100 billion/year by 2020, with a gradual ramping up of funds starting now. The US pledged $3 billion between now and 2020, of which $500 million is overdue. Other nations are behind in their pledges, but the US is the major deadbeat at this moment.
• Republican members of Congress are adamant that the US not meet this obligation, and have tried to create legislative roadblocks that would prevent ANY payment to the Green Fund or anything like it.
• If this problem persists until December, the Paris conference may fail altogether to reach any agreement. The small island nations, threatened with imminent inundation, the bigger ones like Bangladesh who need major adaptations to avoid catastrophic flooding and vast forced migrations--these nations who need the Fund aren't interested in hearing about the insurmountable political problems of the world's wealthiest nation. They need adaptation, and they need the Fund.
• If Congress continues on this trajectory, this breach of trust will very likely keep many of the nation-parties from signing any agreements in Paris. The whole process will founder--which is exactly what Republican members are hoping. They want to destroy the climate movement, and ultimately the earth, in order to ... do what exactly?

Does it matter if the Maldives, or even Bangladesh fail to sign on to the UNFCCC document? Or if they fail to reduce their very small carbon footprints? Maybe not, but their insistence on acknowledging the rich/poor divide, and the failure of the US especially to do its part, will surely encourage bigger players--think India, Turkey, Indonesia--to hide behind that disagreement. The whole idea of shared 'differential' responsibility will unravel--and the world-historical opportunity to resolve a global crisis on a global scale will collapse. That's the frightening stake in this struggle. The venue is the US Congress. The time is right now.

As national pledges (INDCs) for greenhouse gas reduction pile up at the UNFCCC office in Bonn, in preparation for the Paris conference, do you ever wonder how all these nations are going to meet those sometimes ambitious goals? I do. Of course there are some obvious answers:  President Obama tightens regulations of coal-fired plants, putting some out of business and making it unlikely that others will ever be built. Carbon exchange markets in China, subsidies for renewable installations in Europe, challenges to fossil fuel subsidies, an expanded nuclear power sector in India ... there are pretty tangible policy decisions of many sorts that will clearly take us part-way there.

But what about all the independent economic agents, the individual consumers like you and me, and--maybe less visible to the rest of us--the private corporations who drive much of the energy sector wherever they operate? An interesting light was shone on this missing piece of the puzzle in this morning's New York Times, as a group of some of the world's largest corporations joined the existing coalition of such companies taking actions to avert the unfavorable business climate which would result from climate change.  What sorts of actions? According to the article:

"The efforts include less overall use of energy and water, more recycling, more use of renewable energy, and a wave of promises to improve the supply chains for commodities like soybeans, palm oil and beef. These are often produced in the tropics, creating powerful financial incentives to chop down forests, which not only contributes to global warming but destroys some the world’s richest biological regions."

In sum, companies are interested in some substantial changes in how they produce. For example Astra Agro, one of Indonesia's largest palm oil producers and a major influence on forestry policies, could significantly alter the political equation that permits Indonesia's disastrous loss of tropical forest.

Is this international coalition of global corporations for real, or is it just another greenwashing effort? Probably some of both, though it would be hard to tell in the short term. What is surely true, though, is that in the current climate of opinion, it seems important for these powerhouse companies to burnish their credentials on climate questions. That in itself--along with the Pope's visit, some Republican defectors from denialism, and much else--suggests that we are reaching a critical mass of public support. About time.

All Politics is Local 2.0

While last fall's historic climate summit between Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping has been justly celebrated as a milestone for the climate movement, something arguably more interesting happened in Los Angeles earlier this week. Representatives of several dozen municipal and state governments from each country met to discuss specific cooperative programs and technology exchanges, with an important goal: to implement last fall's broad bilateral agreements, but also to accelerate and deepen commitments made by their national governments. Given the sclerotic impediments of the Chinese system, and the obstructionist tendencies of the legislative branch of our own federal government, these local initiatives may prove to be the most effective mechanism by far to bring the world's two largest national producers of greenhouse gas into alignment with the urgent goals of the Paris conference.

What will these city-to-city partnerships look like? You can read the lengthy list of projects here. Among the more impressive instances are pledges by Beijing and Guangzhou to reach peak levels of carbon emission by 2020, rather than the target of 2030 set by the national government. Overall, the group of Chinese cities declaring accelerated rates of energy conversion represent 25% of China's total urban carbon emission--a significant amount by any measure.

On the American side, California, both the state and a large number of its cities, are taking the lead with a state-wide goal of 80-90% carbon reduction by 2050. Seattle, meanwhile, has pledged to become carbon neutral--no new emissions--by 2050. Among the dozen or so American cities at the summit was Boston--a fact that hasn't yt come to the attention of local media.

Beyond the setting of ambitious goals, the conference put into place collaborative systems, drawing on advances in both countries, to help municipalities achieve these goals. One such joint effort is the California-China Urban Climate Collaborative, an initiative to share planning and policy ideas between the two countries as well as building connections between clean technology companies. Another is the agreement between Shenzhen, Guangdong, and Los Angeles to share best practices in green construction and ship pollution containment. China also brings to the table advances in smart grid design and low-emission transportation, among other successes.

Will all these arrangements work? Part of me is suspicious of grand announcements and bureaucratic fixes, but the fact is, much of what needs to happen with decarbonization needs to happen locally. California has proven the truth of this with its notable successes under two administrations, and cities like Portland OR and Seattle have leaped ahead of national targets. Maybe most significant is the high level of participation by major Chinese cities. The world has to believe that the US and China are serious about climate policy if any global progress is to be made in Paris--and if we have a prayer of containing emissions levels at a livable level. Yesterday's summary announcement in Los Angeles may come to be seen as a historic breakthrough in the nick of time.

Will Australia Join the Climate Movement?

No one should mistake the abrupt change in Australia's  leadership for a 'green revolution.' While it is true that deposed Liberal leader Tony Abbott was possibly the world's most powerful climate change denier, a PM whose economic policy focused on the promotion of coal production ("coal is good for humanity," he infamously remarked just last year), his successor, Malcolm Turnbull, has pledged not to change Australia's energy policy in the short term. That policy includes an INDC pledge to the Paris conference that is widely regarded as inadequate, especially given Australia's central role in coal export and consumption, and given the clear failure of Abbott's climate plan, an Emissions Reduction Fund that actually pays corporations to increase their fossil fuel consumption.

Beyond that bleak picture, though, there is some reason for hope: Turnbull, after all, was a supporter of Australia's path-breaking carbon exchange program in 2009, support which caused him to lose his leadership position to Abbott, who killed the exchange last year and replaced it with the toothless ERF. Furthermore, without any dramatic policy initiatives, Turnbull could--as The Guardian's Lenore Taylor points out--adjust the baseline against which emissions are measured to make the ERF an effective tool, quite similar in fact to the defunct carbon exchange system. But will he?

On the one hand Turnbull is a conservative, tenuously restored to power and not eager to put his majority on the line. On the other he clearly was on the green edge of the Liberal Party before Abbott pushed him out. Maybe more to the point, his mandate is economic development, and Abbot's vision of a coal-based future for Australia's economy--quite apart from its offensive repudiation of the whole global movement to limit emissions, especially coal-driven--looks like economic nonsense as the coal industry contracts.

There are many twists and turns on the long road to bring the world's nations--all 195--to some effective consensus on climate policy. Australia, with the world's 19th largest economy, is neither a key player nor an irrelevant one. Tony Abbott, with his big mouth and tone-deaf ear, played a disproportionately large role in undermining that consensus. If he leaves the stage, or at least loses his megaphone, even to another business-minded conservative, this can only be a good thing. Maybe Turnbull will seize the historic moment to do even more.

Sunny Side Up

As I've mentioned, the COP 21 Paris climate conference officially happens in early December, but the essential work of the conference is happening right now. Last week's negotiations in Bonn were one manifestation of that; another is the extensive commentary that is appearing, both about the UNFCCC process and the many other facets of the issue, even here in the US, where consciousness has lagged far behind most of the rest of the world.

One extraordinary instance of this is the essay by commentator Jonathan Chait in the current issue of New York magazine (from which I've borrowed this rather stunning image from photographer Ralph Smith). Chait efficiently sums up the key indices of the problem, the history of the global process to address it, and in particular, some recent instances of 'issue fatigue' that make it hard to sustain a public discourse about it. But his real point is to address that mood of avoidance or despair that has immobilized many a concerned person--hence his title: "The Sunniest Climate-Change Story You've Ever Read." I would encourage anyone to read the whole piece, but here are a few points that struck me:

• First, Chait schematizes the challenge to address climate change as a dialectic between governmental mandates on an international scale, and technological innovation of a free-form, mostly private sector and rather decentralized nature (an interplay between "edict and invention," as he puts it). Government mandates won't help unless they can be realized with efficient, not hopelessly expensive technical means. But those innovations will have trouble flourishing without support from the public sector--and protection from the destructive efforts of powerful existing energy corporations, a point Chait perhaps under-emphasizes. (A timely instance: the oil interests in California just yesterday killed a legislative bill that would have mandated reductions in gasoline consumption, and thus opened a huge market opportunity for electric cars and other transit alternatives.)
• Second, he documents the wildly accelerating efficiency of solar energy in particular but also wind and other non-carbon alternatives, applying the logic of Moore's Law (which postulated the amazing progression of computer chip capacity) to these technologies. The sunshine in his title is more than a metaphor, and the possibilities for rapid solar conversion--if one had the investment capital and the political will--are there for all to see.
• There is, though, a particularly concerning dark cloud that could blow over this cheerful scenario and block the sun's healing power: the Republican Party, the only major party in the world, as he notes, that is still locked in delusional denial and insanely anti-scientific dogma. Unfortunately, that party controls the legislative branch of the world's most powerful nation, largest economy, and second largest source of greenhouse gas. The threat of Republican obstruction, and the nightmare of a denialist President taking office in 2017 and undoing all the executive actions taken so far, is a major impediment to the rest of the world. It may already have doomed the possibility of legally binding agreements in Paris, and undermines whatever trust the other nations might have in the UNFCCC process--and trust is the essential currency of this unprecedented effort to address an existential problem by international consensus. 

Chait lays this out for us with articulate logic, which is why I think it is one of the most useful articles on any  subject I have seen in quite a while. Follow the link, above, and read it.

Traffic Slows on the Auto-Bonn to Paris

Negotiators from all 195 COP nations were meeting in Bonn last week, trying to get the UNFCCC draft agreement into manageable shape for the Paris conference. This process has been at work in a sense for 4 years, but more actively since the Geneva meetings in February. Now, with about 10 weeks and 5 official meeting days left till Paris, lots of folks are offering a range of opinions on the crucial question: how's it going, and will there be a strong, substantive text that all parties will be willing to sign onto in December? Here are some key opinions on the state of negotiations after last week's meeting:

• The 'Elders,' a distinguished group of global leaders led by Kofi Annan, Graca Machel, and Mary Robinson, declared that the negotiations were stalemated, and called on National leaders to intervene directly to find common ground, not only for Paris but for the the Sustainable Development Goals agreement to be hashed out in New York late this month.
• Guaranteed funding for the promised $100 billion/year mitigation and adaptation ("loss and damage") fund (aka the Green Climate Fund) remains a potential deal breaker for the developing nations (the 134 nations in the 'G77' group) who will need the funding to implement their own plans. About 20 of the wealthiest nations, including the US and the EU, issued a statement last week in Bonn that laid out complex rules for how this money would be accounted (the point is in part to avoid counting existing funding in the total). While precise modes and pledges are far from ready, the signatories do seem committed to a transparent process--involving a very complex array of national, international, public/private, and other sorts of funding--a good sign, but not yet a deal.
• Procedurally, the Bonn meeting took a big step by delegating to  smaller group of co-chairs the task of producing a new, streamlined draft of the UNFCCC agreement by early October. That would set the stage for finalizing the Paris document in advance of the actual Paris conference--an essential deadline if any meaningful agreement is to be reached at the huge Paris event. Various participants pointed to this procedural move as a major display of trust by national delegates--riven as they are by tensions and competing interests--though it could also be seen as a desperate maneuver to break through the logjam that has so far produced diffuse, unusable drafts.

It has long been clear that these months leading up to Paris would determine the real work of forging global agreements that the Paris meeting will only have time to acknowledge, perhaps tweak, and sign. The phrase 'legally binding' is being used with greater frequency in these preliminaries, though it isn't at all clear that major players such as the US, China, and India will sign any such thing. Diplomats speak an inscrutable tongue, so it's hard to know really how much mistrust, difference of opinion, and outright resistance is being rubbed away in these seemingly nonstop sessions such as the one in Bonn. But the declaration of some--that the sessions are doing much better than those that preceded Copenhagen--should perhaps be taken as a good sign, if not quite a promise.