Living Within Our Carbon Budget

With the security lockdown in France persisting through the Climate conference, Naomi Klein and a host of other climate activists are lamenting the loss: instead of a dialogue between 'official' climate policy-makers and their activist critics, we are at risk to get just one side of that conversation. It is extremely useful, then, to read the advance critique of the conference agreement by Justin Gillis in today's New York Times. Gillis advances the notion of a 'carbon budget'--which may be the most important metric in the whole climate discussion, and one of the least contestable. A pointed conversation about that concept would indeed be useful, in the streets of Paris, on-line, or wherever, since it's not going to happen inside the conference hall.

Carbon budget? Scientists have pretty clearly identified a total quantity of carbon emissions which would keep temperature increases below 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C). This is a measurable amount of fossil fuel--and 2/3 of it has been burned already. On the present post-Paris trajectory the world's economy will reach the limit by 2050 or sooner.

And when the 'budget' is all 'spent' ... ? Economic activity will not cease. Fossil fuels will still be consumed. Temperatures will rise beyond 3.6 F, perhaps as high as 6 or 8 degrees F in this century--and the planet will become a very different, quite possibly uninhabitable place. That is the inexorable logic of the carbon budget.

How certain is that cause-and-effect relation? Well, here's where it makes sense to say that 'climate is complex,' multiply determined, hard to be precise about. The key term here is 'carbon sensitivity': we know that carbon levels in the atmosphere will increase in direct proportion to fossil fuel consumption, but we don't know exactly how that will translate into temperature increases, and where, given the vagaries of ocean currents, carbon sinks, solar variability, and a host of other factors. But the 'carbon budget' assumption that fossil fuel consumption beyond a fixed level will take us beyond a 3.6 F temperature rise is widely accepted by scientists studying the question--most notably the UN's IPCC report in 2013.

So why not set a fixed carbon budget and mandate compliance from the world's nations, if that is the only way to guarantee tolerable carbon emissions limits? A sensible question, and maybe the only climate policy question that matters. The upper bound of carbon consumption can't really be finessed. It's real (even if the numbers can be slightly adjusted). But the process of allocating shares of dwindling carbon allotments has long been viewed as politically, diplomatically impossible--which is why the only truly meaningful way to measure success at Paris will not even be considered by the conferees.

And if a 'carbon budget' were implemented? The immediate problem, as Gillis makes clear, is a daunting question of justice, or equity: the US, China, and Europe have spent the vast share of that 'budget,' i.e. are responsible for most of the problem. We've used up our share, and the remaining consumption of fossil fuels by rights belongs to the less developed countries. In the short term, fossil-based growth should be permitted only to those historic under-users. In the longer term, the developed countries need to massively invest in conversion to renewables, at a much faster pace than previously imagined, both in our own economies and in the developing ones--including big ones like India. Effectively this would mean huge transfers--many trillions of dollars--of capital: from richer to poorer nations, from fossil-fuel producers to renewables, from one set of investors to another. The dislocations to the global economy would arguably be as catastrophic as big temperature increases unless carefully managed, in the framework of an international consensus.

Would market regulation of carbon do the same thing without the coercion of a fixed budget? It is true that carbon exchanges or taxes have more supporters than the global carbon budget idea, though these carbon market proposals seem to be excluded from the Paris talks as well. In theory, a carbon tax system could enforce a de facto budget, and exchanges (with huge subsidies) could address the equity issue by causing transfers to poorer nations. But would this happen? I observe that among the proponents are major corporations, including the big oil companies, as well as certain status-quo-oriented politicians. Why? Because all these market systems depend on the details of pricing, which would be endlessly negotiable. Low-priced exchanges such as the EU's have wasted valuable time and energy. Pricing that enforced stringent reductions in fossil fuels would meet all the same political resistance as a strict budget--but in a more complex, possibly covert forum. I like the simplicity of a fixed carbon budget--and so do a lot of climate scientists.

So what would it take? First, an acknowledgement of the equity issue by nations like the US, who have tended to promote a model of equal responsibility moving forward, with limited transfers of development funds. Second, a complete paradigm change, involving subordinating the economic interests of the rich and powerful to norms of equity that favor the poor--a tall order. And third, it would require the technical means to convert trillions in investment into rapid renewable energy generation--a scenario whose feasibility is debatable.

Alternatively? We can stumble along with the incremental approach inscribed in the Paris agreement (if it gets approved). We can press for the 'ratcheting up' over time of that agreement (and congratulate ourselves that 195 nations, including recalcitrants like China, the US, and India, are even in the conversation). We can hope 'climate sensitivity' coefficients are lower than most scientists think. Or we can fantasize about a techno-fix that some bright geo-engineer will invent tomorrow.

Personally I don't think any of the alternatives represent any security whatsoever for our children's and grandchildren's future. The rigid, top-down structure implied by 'carbon budget' logic presents a huge challenge to our frail human skills at diplomacy, negotiation, and enlightened self-interest. But truly, what choice do we have? Either Paris moves us a step closer to some real solution, based on absolute limitation, or it promotes a false sense of security that will haunt us in coming decades. I would like to believe in the former, but I suspect and fear the latter.

People's Climate March, 2015--Be There!

What? People's Climate Marches

Where? All over the world, but not so much in the US

When? Sunday November 29th

Why? Given the prohibition on staging demonstrations or any other public mass expressions of support for stringent climate agreement in Paris, these marches are the main way the world's peoples can tell their leaders and representatives how much they want this agreement--and not just any agreement, but a serious, binding commitment to aim, not for a dangerous 2 degrees C temperature rise, but 1.5 C. That means much faster conversion to renewables, and Green Climate funding to make it happen. That means carbon pricing to reflect the huge cost of carbon pollution, and concerted efforts to make sure fossil fuel reserves stay in the ground. It means a whole new chapter in the human occupation of the planet.

In Boston? The march starts at 11 am in Harvard Square, and will proceed to Boston Common. The US needs to develop a better attitude on this issue, and a much more urgent approach. The New York march last year was a start. Sunday's march will keep the momentum going.

Is the Paris Conference a Lost Cause?

So is the COP 21 Paris Climate conference going forward, or not? Laurent Fabius and the French government say yes, without a doubt, though under heavy security. All 22,000 official delegates, from 195 nations and a variety of non-profit organizations, will be accommodated, with secure transportation to and from Le Bourget and every attempt at normal process.

Naomi Klein, on the other hand, says no: with the French state of emergency banning all public demonstrations, the elaborately planned marches and protests will not be allowed, and she makes the case that without that popular call to action the conference will lose a major dimension of its purpose. Others in the climate movement are suggesting that they will take to the streets anyway, massing in the Place de la République for the big November 29 march despite the legal prohibition. Efforts to carry out the 'red-line' protests--intended to call attention to places in the draft agreement where national proposals (INDCs) cross a 'red line' into a recognized danger zone--will take place as much as possible on line. Klein would surely object that the chance for public notice will be greatly reduced, though some useful communication might be possible.

Have the terrorists thus trumped the climate movement? In some sense, no--the main event here was always the international accord, which has a reasonable chance of going forward. Inadequate as it may be, the draft agreement will most likely resolve its ambiguities and stand as a benchmark at least for future efforts to reduce greenhouse gas and slow the pace of climate change.

But Klein is right that the popular pressure is a necessary element in driving reluctant governments--and even more reluctant corporations--to make drastic changes in the global energy business. The current COP 21 proposals are only a small step toward a real solution, and the work of activists--from 350.org to Greenpeace and all the rest--is only beginning to hit its stride. In that sense the chance to stage imaginative, media-friendly protests in Paris before a large global audience is a big loss. On the other hand, the real issue for movement activists is staying power--the real work of strengthening this year's agreements will take place over the next 5 to 10 years. Paris would have been a great momentum builder, but that chance really is preempted now. The wealth of imagination, energy, and devotion that went into those aborted plans will have to regroup and start anew, starting on December 11th.

Paris Toujours

When I began this blog project, back in January, my first post was interrupted by the murderous attacks at Charlie Hebdo and the Kosher Supermarket. After acknowledging the horror, I resumed my year-long journey down the 'road to Paris,' noting in passing that the civil disruptions threatened by climate change may occur on a vastly larger scale than Islamist terror. Now I am again sharing the horror and outrage of Friday's attacks--so much more murderous, so random and thus generalized. But I can only hope, as France mourns, reflects, and regroups, that the COP 21 conference will proceed, sombre but undistracted. Because it's true: the threat of displacement, hunger, extreme weather, mass migration, all within a framework of global inequality and failure of the larger greenhouse gas emitters to accept due responsibility--all this remains a source of potential civil breakdown far worse than anything ISIS or Al Qaeda can trigger. So while I join the French--and the Lebanese, the Russians, the many other victims of ISIS's savagery--in mourning and deploring this intrusion of senseless violence into a world that has too much of it already, I also intend to continue with my tiny piece of the vast project to address the climate crisis. And to wish the delegates bon courage as they head for a locked-down Paris.

Are Marauding Elephants a Threat to Paris?

How big a problem does a Republican Congress pose for Paris Climate negotiators? In an interview yesterday with the Financial Times Secretary of State John Kerry brought this interesting question to the surface in surprisingly frank terms. Though it's no surprise, Kerry was quite clear: the US will block any legally binding language that makes the Paris agreement sound like a treaty, even though the EU and many, many other participating parties would like to see such binding language. Why is this such a deal-breaker for the US? Because Republican senators are poised to challenge any such agreement, and insist on their constitutional prerogative to approve or reject anything defined as a 'treaty.' So the US must insist that the COP 21 document create no such opening, and the result will be a weaker document--and more to the point, a weaker foundation for mutual trust.

Note that this situation has changed since 1998, when President Clinton declined to submit the Kyoto agreement for Senate approval, having virtually no support from either party. Democrats are mostly willing to sign a climate treaty now--all three Democratic presidential candidates are vying to give it the strongest support, and clearly see it as a winning wedge issue in 2016. That's exactly what Kerry suggested in an effort to reduce the damage to US credibility: Republicans, he said, have "eliminated themselves from contention" in 2016 by their intransigence on this and other issues. Still, the inability of the US Congress to approve a climate treaty becomes a significant fact in Paris, despite visible momentum in the US media and political spheres (even among a few Republican representatives). Kerry, it should be noted, said that "the Paris talks have received very little attention in the US media"--an observation that I believe is becoming increasingly untrue as the summit draws closer.

Kerry was a little less reassuring with regard to the serious problem of financing, which threatens to be the biggest sticking point in Paris. Poorer countries want to know that the $100 billion/year Green Climate Fund will be fully funded, and a coalition of low-lying countries is increasingly adamant that loss-and-damage guarantees, i.e. climate-related disaster relief funding, be written into any agreement. Congress has so far prevented the US from allocating even the $3 billion it currently owes on its Copenhagen pledge--a sum much smaller than the US share of new financing should be. Harvard economist Robert Stavins dismisses the loss-and-damge demand as "unlimited liability for bad weather," and his condescending phrase points to how far the wealthier nations still need to come to reach any understanding of the moral dimensions of the problem.

For his part, Kerry says "We'll get it done," and suggests that President Obama will go to the mat for climate funds in budget negotiations with Congress. Maybe. The fact remains that the mindless, largely non-negotiable hostility of a Republican Congress looms as a fact in Paris, and there are limits to how agilely Obama and Kerry can dance around this impediment.

Telling the Truth after Paris

A month from now the Paris conference will be in full swing, but already attention is turning to how the COP 21 agreement--largely drafted, though some hot issues remain--will be viewed--i.e. spun--in the follow-through. The Times 's Andrew Revkin, in last Friday's Dot Earth blog post, points to the danger of too optimistic an assessment, given the near-impossibility of reaching the stated 2C goal, even with the proposed agreements in place. He cites the sobering quantitative analysis in Brad Plumer's recent Vox article, which makes a convincing case.

On the other hand, a purely negative assessment of what COP 21 can't and won't achieve would not serve our collective interest either. Copenhagen's message of failure was not a useful one. So how can the conference and its spinners balance the daunting, frightening realities that Paris will not resolve with some positive message of what can still be done? Here's my attempt to frame a 'realistic' summary of where our species needs to go as we assess the achievements of the Paris summit, and move forward:

1) Well done: all the governments of the world agree to do something to address the climate crisis, and the value of this universal recognition of the problem should not be disregarded;

2) But it's not enough: with all the COP 21 pledges in place, best estimates suggest massive disruptions, migrations, disasters, possibly an uninhabitable planet before the end of this century--within the lifespan of our grandchildren;

3) So the Paris agreement needs to be the launch pad for a more rigorous next-phase process by which countries are reviewed for compliance, and major emitters--that means you, US of A, and you too, China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey ...--ramp up their conversion to renewables immediately;

4) And let's not kid ourselves: to achieve that accelerated response, large capital sums (trillions) will have to flow from rich to poor, developed to developing countries, with some reduction of wealth in the richer countries (and guess who could afford some wealth reduction?);

5) Meanwhile, major changes in carbon pricing and/or draconian regulations must drive fossil fuel corporations out of the carbon fuel business altogether in the next few decades and into massively-scaled renewables;

6) And even with the above measures in place, research on carbon capture technologies (but NOT geo-engineering sci-fi schemes) must be funded at much more aggressive levels to avert hugely destructive effects of the CO2 already in the atmosphere (and the gigatons that will be dumped there during the painful conversion era).

That's the truth as I see it of where Paris leaves us. Need I add that the alternative scenarios are quite literally apocalyptic?

China's Coal Revision: A Blockbuster for Paris?

I'm waiting nervously--maybe you are too--to see what effect China's greatly elevated coal consumption numbers will have on the Paris discussions. Though it has been known to Chinese officials for months, maybe years, that China's statistical agencies had undercounted coal consumption, it only became news yesterday when The New York Times reported it in a comprehensive story by Chris Buckley. By overlooking smaller, mostly industrial (not utilities) enterprises, the official statistical agency underestimated by as much as 17% China's actual greenhouse gas emissions from coal--a huge number (greater than the entire German economy's fossil fuel emissions). So what will this mean for the international process to contain GHG?

One might note the declaration yesterday by Chinese premier Li Keqiang that China has a "duty to humanity" to reduce its emissions. The statement, made in conjunction with President Hollande's visit to China in an effort to build momentum for Paris, is on its face unrelated to the coal announcement, but it's hard to think it was a coincidence. Is China becoming more interested in taking leadership on the climate issue as it advances to the center of the world stage? Or might it be more apt to see Li's declaration as mendacious face-saving?

Another optimistic spin is given by observers who note that 1) China's economic downturn is already reducing its emissions, and 2) this higher number will accelerate the rate of decrease, and cause China's emissions to peak sooner than 2030, as promised. But notice the perverse logic of this bureaucratic response: the problem is worse than we thought; therefore it's easier to make it less bad. This is not the thinking that will get us where we need to go.

What needs to happen--at least--is that this bleak statistic motivates the delegates in Paris to insist on strict, binding review of national compliance, at least every 5 years, as many propose, but really in an ongoing way. And that 'review' must be tied to an expressed goal to improve on the inadequate commitments that most nations--including our own--are bringing to the Paris table. China's alarming revelation--coupled with the devastation in Indonesia, backsliding in Brazil, lawsuits that threaten Obama's executive measures in the US, Russia's increasingly strident denialism--demonstrate once again how much work will remain after Paris.

So here's my nervous hope for what will happen: a relatively tranquil accord around existing agreements in Paris, but a vehement and binding commitment to use Paris as a platform for greatly accelerated energy transformation and climate adaptation moving forward. And a global citizens' movement to hold them/us to it--starting right here in the US as well as the EU. Without tangible, enforceable measures to do better immediately after Paris and thereafter, China's example--and all the others--makes clear that we risk spinning in circles, promoting false solutions and phony data, right to the end.

Where Are We Going, Where Have We Been

Anyone interested in the Paris Climate conference, and particularly the agreement that is shaping up on greenhouse gas emissions control, should take a look at this summary by Megan Darby at Climate Home. It succinctly summarizes what observers have been noting for months as national plans accumulated in Bonn: broad international cooperation around GHG controls, while welcome, is inadequate; further 'ramping up' will be essential in coming years; attention will need to turn to 'adaptation', i.e. helping vulnerable societies survive the inevitable changes; and funding for that adaptation will be essential.

There may be further surprises in Paris, and no doubt there will be some bitter disagreement, particularly around funding from wealthy nations. The larger shape of what will be possible in Paris, though, is pretty well determined by the INDCs, and Darby's assessment seems to me to be a reasonable, half-full/half-empty view.

Climate Promises Go Up In Smoke

Rains have finally come to Indonesia, damping down the forest fires that have raged all over that nation for the past two months. Respiratory illness alerts will be relaxed  across Southeast Asia, and public health officials in Singapore and Malaysia can relax as well, though dozens of deaths are reported in Indonesia itself, and a staggering 300,000 cases of respiratory infection were attributed to the smoke in Singapore alone. The Guardian's George Monbiot called it "the worst environmental disaster of the 21st Century (so far)," while the director of Indonesia's response agency called the fires a "crime against humanity."

Why are these fires happening? Because burning is the cheapest way to clear forest for agriculture, because palm oil production is expanding rapidly into Indonesia's forests, because the government has been ineffectual at best in sanctioning the violators. And this year because El Niño has produced especially dry, tinderbox conditions all over the Pacific basin. These chronic conditions, worse this year but bad every year, contribute to Indonesia's deplorable record at forest conservation, but in this year's exceptional disaster the world sees something worse: the massive destruction of peat. Indonesia's unusually peat-based forest floor is an important carbon sink, and as the fires consume it, they release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. For the past two months Indonesia has in fact been the world's largest carbon emitter, worse than either China or the US, as the fires do their work.

Will the international community ever persuade a country like Indonesia to tame its fires? (Or America to lower its per capita energy consumption?) President Widodo was in Washington last week, but he and President Obama were more in a mood to celebrate Indonesia's adherence to the Pacific trade agreement than to carp about runaway greenhouse gas pollution. Control of deforestation plays a part in Indonesia's INDC proposal for Paris, but whether it can fulfill any promises regarding this politically charged topic--in the face of opposition from huge palm oil producers--is doubtful.  The specter of runaway emissions, blanketing a whole region of the earth in smoke, should haunt the well-intentioned diplomats seeking to solidify a global climate plan next month.

Thinking of my previous post, I have to wonder if this disaster in Indonesia doesn't confirm the opinion of 'peasant-philosopher' Pierre Rabhi: the climate crisis is just the expression of a larger failure of humans to respect the earth. It's not just the respiratory deaths, not just the carbon emissions that are horrific--it's the massive destruction of species, the threat to the world's orangutan population, the depletion of a vast ecological system. We are a destructive species, careening rapidly toward our own destruction. The heedless pursuit of profit--in Indonesia, and everywhere else--is the core of the problem. Can the Paris conference address itself to that?