ROW Episode 26

In this episode entitled “The Emperor Has No Clothes” we offer an honest assessment of the flaws in the COP system for managing climate change and propose the fixes necessary if we are to have a prayer of acting quickly enough to keep global temperatures from rising above levels causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and planet earth.

Transcript

Sovaida: 0:08

Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast dedicated to envisioning a better world and to infusing hope that we can make the principled choices to build that world. In this episode, entitled The Emperor Has No Clothes, we offer an honest assessment of the flaws in the COP system of climate meetings for managing climate change and propose the necessary fixes if we are to have a prayer of acting quickly enough to keep global temperatures from rising above levels that would lead to catastrophic consequences for both humanity and planet Earth. You know, Socrates had a very interesting thought. He is purported to have said the following. He said the secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. This isn't just a platitude or a theory, but has very real meaning and tremendous impact when we start applying it to some of the biggest global challenges of our time. Today, what I propose to do is to look and see what happens when we apply this concept to climate change and how we tackle climate change. So what constitutes the old here in terms of Socrates's quote? We have just completed COP26, which is the latest get together of state parties to discuss proposals for how to tackle climate change. This process which is now 25 years old, was put in motion by a treaty that was signed in 1992 between 154 countries called the UN Framework for Climate Change. You may have heard of this UNFCCC. That's what it is. It's this treaty. And it established this process for annual meetings to discuss the following. The goal of this UNFCCC was to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere in order to prevent dangers of human interference with the climate system. So that was the overarching goal. The 26th meeting just ended in Glasgow. Let's remind ourselves of why we're engaging in this process at all, and what's at stake for the world. The world has been warming up at a rapid speed due to greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane. Since the first COP gathering in 1995 in Berlin, we have doubled the damage done to our environment due to global warming. Half of all the carbon ever released into the atmosphere by humans since the dawn of humanity have been put there since 1995. That's mind-boggling. So to be clear, in pre-industrial times, there were 280 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. In 1995, we went from 280 to 360 parts per million. And today we're at 420 parts per million. Now in the Paris conference in 1915, COP 21, the state parties, agreed to keep global warming substantially below two degrees centigrade compared with pre industrial times by the year 2100. In other words, not to go above two degrees of warming, keep it substantially lower and to try and limit it to 1.5 degrees centigrade of warming compared with the temperatures in pre industrial times. The goal of this latest conference that just ended in Glasgow a few days ago was to keep the 1.5 degree centigrade target alive. Why? Why is it so important to keep this 1.5 degree centigrade target alive? Because here's what happens when we go beyond 1.5 degree centigrade warming by the end of this century, and what happens particularly if we get to 2 degrees warming. The storms and flooding events that used to occur every century will instead occur every year. Deadly heat waves will occur, so that places in South Asia and the Middle East will be so hot that even walking outside, and certainly working outside, would regularly represent a lethal risk. Hundreds of millions will become climate refugees. and this will obviously become a trigger for conflict over land, places to live, places to grow food and resources. All this while we're facing water shortages and food shortages because of the deadly effect on crop yields. The frequency, intensity and duration of droughts and heat waves will increase. The permafrost which is supposedly permanent, will become impermanent, and as it melts, it will release a lot of methane to the atmosphere, which is a particularly terrible greenhouse gas. And we will destroy ecosystems. 70 percent of tropical corals, which are nurseries for fish, will be lost if we get to 1.5, and if we get to 2, they'll all be gone. All of the coral reefs. It just doesn't bear thinking about. Now, if we're in any doubt that these impacts that are estimated are real, that these aren't just scientists going crazy, we're already finding where we are. And where we are is 1.1 to 1.3 degrees warming. Remember we have till the end of the century to get to 1.5, so we don't have much bandwidth left. Already what we're seeing is In India, for instance, in other countries in Asia, including China, we're seeing terrible pollution. You may have read the articles in recent days talking about these noxious air blankets that are covering large swaths of India, so that the Supreme Court of the country had to step in again to close factories and order farmers to stop burning their fields and to stop diesel pumps from irrigating and to stop cremation pyres and so on. Employers were told to keep half of their employees home. They're using anti smog guns to create artificial mist and fire trucks to douse streets with water and chemical dust suppressants. Astoundingly, 1.7 million Indians died from the effects of pollution in 2019, accounting for one in six deaths in India, and they have a reduction of nine years in average life expectancy. That's horrific. Meanwhile, people's lungs and eyes are burning, and the conditions are leading to brain damage, respiratory problems, and early death. This is just to give you an example of what's already happening before we get to 1.5 degrees. In the U. S., 350,000 people a year are already dying of air pollution produced by fire. We've been hearing about all these wildfires. 345,000 people over the age of 65 have died due to heat waves every year in the last couple of years. 570 million people live less than 5 meters above sea level, and they face increased risk of flooding, severe storms, infectious diseases and other hazards. We've had 242 climate related extreme weather events, like wildfires, hurricanes, and floods in 2020, and they've cost us 178 billion in damage. And the story goes on and on. 2 billion people are already suffering from food insecurity in a world where we have 8 billion people, so that's a quarter of the population of the planet are suffering from food insecurity, because they don't have consistent access to food. And we still haven't hit the 1. 5 degree threshold of warming. This is the reality we're facing that we've just articulated. Given this dire situation, what did we achieve at this last COP26 conference? The bottom line is that If all the countries were to follow through on voluntary pledges, what they call nationally determined commitments. Each country gets to volunteer what it's going to do to keep global warming from going beyond 1.5 by the end of the century. If they all follow through, we are still on track to have our planet, our home warm up to at least 2.4 degrees centigrade by the end of the century. Remember we said we have to keep it down to 1.5 and definitely substantially below 2? We're on track Despite everything that was done in Glasgow, all the sectoral commitments, which we'll talk about, and all the national pledges, we will go up to 2.4. You can see that there's a yawning gap between ambition and reality as the Economist put it so brilliantly. Essentially, after everything that was done at COP26, the countries, the 200 countries will still need to cut emissions, the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that they're putting into the atmosphere by 120 billion tons by 2030. within the next nine years, in order to keep alive the dream, the possibility, of keeping temperatures down to 1.5. What do we conclude from this? What I conclude from this is that using the COP process this, business of meeting every year to have discussions, is not moving us far enough, fast enough in order to tackle climate change. In essence, what's happening is that the ship that is our home, this planet, is both on fire and sinking. And what we're doing at these conferences is we're continuing to spend a lot of time squabbling over who is to blame, who did what when that caused this. The ship is sinking. Now is not the time to settle scores. Now is the time to all chip in and do our best, lend a shoulder, grab buckets, grab those pumps, patch up the holes in the ship, do whatever it takes, get the lifeboats out in order to save ourselves. And then we can deal with some of this other stuff. An example of what we mean by squabbling is, one of the things that was emphasized at this conference that they thought everybody had agreed was that we needed to phase out cold. Soon, by a certain date. At the very last minute of the conference, a couple of nations acting in tandem, India and China, but the Indians in particular decided to change the words from phrase out to phase down. And you know what the difference is. Phase out means you can see that there's a time when you're not going to use coal anymore. Phase down means we're just gonna, come down slowly and who knows at what speed and when we'll get to where we need to go. This is an example. The reality is we are running out of time and it's no longer enough to pat ourselves on the back and say,"Hey, every year we're making incremental progress." If we had unlimited time, it would make sense to say,"Good job. We're making incremental progress." The fact that the budget of carbon that we're allowed to spew into the atmosphere is now very low and we need to stretch it out till the end of the century. It's not going to be likely if we continue making the kind of incremental process that we've been making. Essentially what I say is we all really need to call the current process for what it is. It really is a case of the emperor has no clothes. You remember the old story of the king who walked around who'd been tricked into believing that some of these magicians were weaving amazing clothes for him, and he was parading naked through the streets, and the people kept saying,"Wow, this is awesome. This is gorgeous." And finally, one little kid points and says,"Hey, the king isn't wearing any clothes." And that's when everybody else gets empowered to say,"Yeah, you know what? We didn't want to say anything, but the kid is right." And indeed, I think the young climate activists today, like Greta Thunberg and many others like her, are raising a call and trying to get us to pay attention and say,"Yeah, you know what? The emperor has no clothes. The system is not working. There's a lot of talk, and not enough of the kind of meaningful action that we need to have if we're going to move forward. Arrest global warming in a meaningful way so as to save humanity and to save our species before many become extinct." Let's go back to Socrates. We've looked at the old that isn't working and he says don't look at the old, don't focus on the old, but focus on building the new. Before we focus on building the new, we have to figure out what some of the fundamental weaknesses that the old had, because we don't want to import them into anything new we build. And I want to propose that there are two particular things that we need to focus on that I think are the cornerstones for building any new system. Because otherwise, no matter how much work we put into it, no matter how many conferences we have over a period of time, whatever number of years, it is not going to work. The first weakness in the current system that we need to avoid is to get past, put aside, this idea of voluntary pledges by countries. They have to give way to a system where we have binding international legislation. Why is that? There's several reasons. First of all, because voluntary pledges prevent us from making the scale and scope of commitments that are adequate to meet the crisis. So we've already said it, the voluntary pledges that have been given, even if fulfilled to the full, which countries generally never do, are putting us on track to warm up our planet by between 1.9 and 3 degrees centigrade with a median of 2.4 degrees compared with pre industrial temperatures. An analogy I like to use is we have a city in which we have a lot of traffic accidents that are killing people. So we're going to put in traffic lights, but you know what, we're going to let each of us volunteer how many days a week we want to obey the traffic lights. So I say,"You know what? I'll obey, I'll stop at the red light two days a week." And you say,"Maybe I'll do it four days a week." This is just a voluntary pledge. Would such a system work? Absolutely not. And yet this is exactly the kind of system that we've created and continue to maintain mindlessly, when clearly it's not going to be sufficient to deal with climate change. The second reason why we need to do away with voluntary pledges and move to binding legislation is that there is no guarantee that any nation that gives a voluntary pledge, or any company for that matter, will follow through. So let's look at some of the pledges made at this COP26. The EU and the US have pledged to get to net zero by 2050. In other words, they won't put any more greenhouse gases into the environment beyond what they take out, so it'll be a net zero. China has said,"We'll get to a net zero by 2060. Meanwhile, we want to peak our emissions by 2030, while the scientists are telling us everybody needs to cut their emissions by 45 percent between now and 2030. So the idea of peak emissions by 2030 just makes no sense. India has pledged to get to net zero by 2070. Over a hundred countries have pledged to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Dozens of nations have vowed to phase out coal plants. 130 nations have vowed to cut deforestation by 2030, but we know that we had previous pledges to curb deforestation which have failed. So again, proof that pledges, the system of pledges, is really not one we should be relying on. A coalition of companies and governments that they aim to make all new cars and vans sold emissions free by 2035 in rich countries and by 2040 elsewhere and on. Wealthy countries pledged in 2009 that they would provide a hundred billion dollars a year by 2020 to help countries who were poorer to adapt. And they already broken that promise. So this idea of giving promises and nice words is just very childish. It's really no wonder that a teenager, Greta Thunberg, says,"Blah, blah, blah, blah. That's what all these words are. You say a lot of beautiful words, but you don't follow through." The third problem with the voluntary pledges is that they produce this scattershot approach that gives a false impression that the commitments are rosier than they really are. So it creates an illusion that,"Oh, we're doing really well with these commitments." Let me give you an example. So there's been talk about phasing out coal power by some countries, or reducing methane emissions, or ending deforestation. But in each of these cases, big nations were missing from each of these agreements. So for instance, with the coal pledge, it didn't include the world's five biggest consumers of coal, like Australia. And Asia produces and consumes three quarters of the world's coal. With the methane pledge, China was missing. China emits more methane than any other country. So when you start thinking about the reality of these sectoral pledges that seem so amazing, you realize that when you dig a little bit, they're just not going far enough, fast enough. The fourth problem with voluntary pledges is there's no way of keeping nations accountable. You will remember from previous episodes, I think it was episodes 12 and 13, we talked a lot about the European Coal and Steel Community and the fact that Jean Monnet, when he proposed its establishment, recognized from his own experience as Deputy Secretary General of the League of Nations that he couldn't rely on the goodwill of nations to follow through on promises and commitments they make in the absence of a system of enforcement. You're living in Alice in Wonderland if you think countries are going to follow through. The truth is that the old ways of doing this, the COP routines, the process is no longer fit for humanity at this stage in its collective development. We talked about this as well, that as humanity approaches its maturity, we need to have institutions, processes, policies and tools that are capable of meeting the needs of humanity at this stage in its development, as it stands on the threshold of maturity, because it has become a single organism by virtue of its unprecedented interconnectedness and interdependence. Later, we'll come to an interesting quote from one of today's politicians on this subject, which is very interesting. Okay. Now, the second flaw, the weakness that we have to tend to, is that we need to scrap the requirement of consensus, which is currently a requirement in this whole COP, COP process under the UNFCCC framework. It's crazy. If you require 197 nations to agree on everything, what it means is that you allow the pace to be set by the least willing nation. This is, again, a point very artfully put by The Economist magazine. Worse than that, it means that all we can hope to achieve is the lowest common denominator, and we can see how low that is. This was another lesson that Jean Monnet taught us in the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community. He said this is one of the flaws that undermined the League of Nations, that made it unworkable in the end, the requirement that decisions be taken unanimously. And therefore, in the European Coal and Steel Community, he created a system, a supranational system, where they could vote as a college, they could, have robust consultation, but then if they couldn't agree, then take a vote, a majority vote. Now, we conclude from this that these flaws are obstacles in achieving our goal of keeping our global warming down to 1.5 degrees centigrade by 2100. And what's interesting is that we see that nations, because they feel constrained by the system that doesn't work, they're already creating workarounds. This whole idea of sectoral agreements, these are multilateral agreements, agreements between groups of nations who get together and say,"Hey, you want to jump on board. We'll agree to cut methane emissions by this much. Hey, you want to jump on board. We'll agree to deforestation." It's kind of coalitions of the willing basically. And It doesn't work because these have to be binding rules that everybody has to abide by and everybody has to agree to. So we move from the old that clearly doesn't work to the new. We've now identified two flaws that we need to avoid. So we need to imagine something radically new and different and do so really quickly. What is it that we need to do? First of all, we need to motivate ourselves. Because it's a lot of work. We need to imagine what kind of world will my child or my grandchild be living in, be doomed to suffer to live in. Will my child go hungry? Will it go thirsty? Will my children or child or grandchildren have to relocate? Will they have access to jobs? Will they have to stay home three days a week because the pollution is so bad? Will their lungs and eyes be burning? Will they have brain damage because of air and water pollution? Will they be able to enjoy nature? Right now, we're saying that by 2050, we are going to lose at this rate one million species in the world. What kind of natural world are we going to have left? And this is only by 2050, we're not even talking about the year 2100. Can they even go outside during the day or will it be too hot? Will they be mired in a world that's at war because of the conflict arising from shortage of resources? What's their life going to be like? Therefore, is it too much trouble for you and me to do whatever it takes and to hold the feet of our leaders to the fire to do what's necessary in order to keep global warming within the bounds of 1.5 degrees centigrade by the end of the century? We need to face reality. The truth is, the reality we have to face before we're willing to do this new thing that I'm going to talk about is that it is impossible, for 8 billion people all over the world to live in material comfort if our economies are powered by fossil fuels like coal, gas, and oil. For example, in Asia, many people live near the coasts, and they're going to have to bear the costs of adapting to and living with heat waves and droughts and floods and storms. And they're going to have to work harder as the world heats up, just to stay in place. The only viable way for them to actually develop is to let go of the burning of fossil fuels. Once we are motivated and recognize reality, what is the new thing we can do? Create an effective collective decision making and enforcement institution or institutions. In other words, a viable system of global governance. We discussed this in great detail in episodes 9, 10, and 11, and also in episode 23. For those of you who may not have listened and are interested in going back, you can find it on the YouTube channel. But what essentially we need, bottom line, is a global decision making body or institution that would have the authority to tackle climate change by passing binding legislation, determining what the kinds of fuel we can use, limiting the amount of fossil fuels we can burn, limiting the amount of emissions like methane that we can spew into the environment, greenhouse gases, and do it for each country. They need to be able to pass binding legislation on how much deforestation is allowed, and better yet, how many trees need to be planted, and impose that on nations. In this body, all voices will be heard. Again, go back to the episodes. Everybody will be represented. We saw in COP26 later, they interviewed a lot of people. Some people had flown in from villages in India and other developing countries, hoping that people would listen to their voices and how climate change is already impacting them. And they were very disappointed. That was not the case. The requirement of consensus and unanimity would not be there. In other words, no nation would have effective veto power. There would be robust consultation followed by a majority vote. This body, collective decision body, would have limited taxation rights, to tax all the people of the world, to fund things like adaptation, which was something we couldn't agree on at COP26. Developing countries particularly need more money for adaptation, for transition, to clean fuels from fossil fuels. The world needs money for research and development to find alternative clean sources of energy. We need to be able to resettle migrants who are losing their homes to flooding, so the fund could help them. We need to account for irreparable losses, what's called loss and damage, which again, people, nations, fought over at COP26. But if we had this system, then the world together could pass the rules determining who needs to be compensated in terms of irreparable losses. And then we don't have to rely on pledges and commitments that are uncapped and promises that are uncapped, like the hundred billion dollars a year assistance for adaptation and mitigation to developing countries by the more rich ones. The body would have the power to legislate on means to withdraw carbon dioxide that's already in the air from it, say through solar geoengineering or by carbon capture. And we also need to have a proper monitoring body to make sure that nations are complying. And if they don't, we then need to have a system of penalties and sanctions on those who are flouting this international legislation. And we need to have a system. Again, we've discussed what this international executive that would have the role of implementing this global legislation would look like, and all the ways that we could ensure that. And again, the European Coal and Steel Community gives us an amazing model in which, for instance, national courts could be used by this global decision making body to enforce these laws against companies or nations or people who flout them. I want to end with a very interesting quote that completely tracks with something that we talked about in I think episode seven of this series. We called it the Maturation Analysis, the idea that humanity is on the path of growth from infancy to majority and is now in its turbulent adolescence. and therefore needs to grow up. Here's what Boris Johnson said at the UN General Assembly meeting this year, in 2021. At the end of his speech, he said,"My friends, the adolescence of humanity is coming to an end. It is time for humanity to grow up." I found it interesting because hopefully our leaders are starting to awaken to the fact that we can no longer behave the way we have so far in immature ways that ill befit us and do not serve us and in fact are very destructive to our well being. I will end the session here and look forward to seeing any comments or questions. If you don't have comments or questions today, please feel free to drop comments on the Facebook page or on the YouTube page and let me know what you think, and let's engage in robust conversation with each other. That's all for this episode of Reimagining Our World. I'll see you back here next month. If you liked this episode, please help us to get the word out by rating us and subscribing to the program on your favorite podcast platform. This series is also available in video on the YouTube channel of the Center for Peace and Global Governance, CPGG.