
One version is that by then, owing to the clathrate gun, the Atlantic Current, or some other nasty self-reinforcing feedback, Earth resembles Tatooine, the desert homeworld of Anakin Skywalker, his son Luke, and the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. The planet is oppressed by harsh deserts and only a small portion remains that can sustain life, and that is shrinking. In this scenario, the story of COP21 in Paris is meaningless. We were genetically not predisposed to do what we had to do to survive, methane concentrations will eventually eliminate mammalian life, and so there is not much of a future ahead for us.
A somewhat different story might be that although the changes wrought by sudden onset climate change have been drastic, erasing most coastal cities and taking us past 2 degrees, they have not stopped human ability to ingeniously adapt by moving underground, planting drought hardy forests to cleanse the atmosphere, and abandoning inhospitable regions. Population is inching down, partly by the severity of the weather but increasingly by a popular will to live more in balance with what nature can provide. In this scenario, what happened in Paris was clearly inadequate and tone deaf, and most people will sneer or spit when it is mentioned.

This world of the future also has common threads with Tatooine, in that something like a race of Jawas — actually, tribes of gleaners and scavengers — travel about in pedal-powered sandcrawlers collecting scrap metal and plastic bits from worthless consumer junk from failed industrial projects. In this world, the events in Paris a hundred years earlier are looked upon as a sort of turning point, when the arc of human history swung away from self-destruction and relearned to garden.

So, dwelling on that third story, the green energy one, sitting around the fire in 2115, what do we think? We imagine the obvious question a child might ask is why ever did they wait so long? We could have done this long before and there would still be polar bears and whales and we would not have these unpredictable monsoons and droughts. Were they that oblivious, the child asks, or was it willful? We would have to say it was a little of both.

They only had to turn off their televisions and walk outdoors, we might tell the child. "What's a television?" she might reply.
The truth is, those few who correctly diagnosed the situation early were labeled Cassandras, anarchists and flakes. You would not find much mention of them in popular news media, except for the occasional derisive reference. In 2115, those people are heroes.

From the near-final text last night it seems agreed that 1.5 degrees is in the treaty, not as a mandate but as a defense line, as the Structured Expert Dialog had urged. It first appears in the Preamble, which says, "consistent with holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C, recognizing that this would significantly reduce risks and impacts of climate change…."
It next appears in Article II, the voluntary pledge protocols, where the document notes with concern that existing pledges will not deliver 2° and that "much greater emission reduction efforts … will be required in the period after 2025 and 2030 in order to hold the temperature rise to below 2°C or 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels[.]" Article II concludes with a call for the IPCC to provide a technical paper by 2018 on the likely impacts of exceeding 1.5 and the required emissions pathways to hold the line there.

Needless to say, nowhere in the four corners of the document is reference made to agriculture (although food security is raised as a concern for adaptation purposes), biochar, holistic management, soil fertility, mob grazing, or planting new forests for carbon sequestration. There is no mention of ecovillages, transition towns or permaculture, although the section on adaption does make mention of empowering community based solutions, driven by transparent, egalitarian processes, and that is laudable.
What is missing from last night's draft, in our view, was strong, coercive language. A striking example is in removing fossil subsidies, where countries are urged "to reduce international support for high-emission investments." Why not just require that? Words like "takes note," "requests," "invites," and "urges," need to be replaced with words like "shall," "must," and "are required."
A good example is a particularly strong paragraph 111, where the body
Decides that the committee [facilitating implementation and compliance] … shall consist of [X] members with recognized competence in relevant scientific, technical, socio-economic or legal fields , to be elected by the Conference of the Parties … on the basis of equitable geographical representation, with [X] members each from the five regional groups of the United Nations and one member each from the small island developing States and the least developed countries, while taking into account the goal of gender balance"
That committee is a key part of the agreement, because they will be influential in what happens next. In the legally binding treaty part, Article II.2 says,
"The committee shall be expert-based and facilitative in nature and function in a manner that is transparent, non-adversarial, and non-punitive."
There are no sanctions, no fines, no punishments, and no leverage that can be applied to enforce the treaty. There is not even something like the ING decision to not do business with anyone relying more than 50% on coal. No boycotts, trade sanctions, tariffs, fees. The treaty is based entirely on trust and voluntary compliance.

Anyone wishing to review the 27-page draft from Thursday night, knowing that by now it has been revised, can find it here: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/da02.pdf.
We will soon find out what the outcome of all the overnight indabas was and how much has changed.

"Not yet," we replied and although we meant that we still have another day or two of negotiations ahead, in a larger sense here we are, sitting in an outdoor café, enjoying peak civilization as though nothing has happened. And yet, in a larger sense the world has changed completely, and yes, we really are f**ked, although there may never have been much we, who were born this late in the game, could have done.
For the grandchild, there is even less she can do; just hope and wait. The hope is that it is not already too late and that the puny start we are making is at least leading us in the right direction. And that was better, to quote Keats, "than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice."
3 comments:
just read tonites post, could hardly wait to get to the computer. have had a feeling that this Friday Dec 11 could be one of the most momentous dates in modern history. But we won't know till tomorrow what the final text includes. And then for 3 years to see how it is being adhered to. AB says need coercive language, and so did Maurice Strong in his autobiography, Where on Earth are We Going, written in 2000 or so. That guy was truly a canadian mahatma.
Ian, Hamilton ON
Great finish with the Keats quote. And although we may be f**ked, we shall continue to persevere because of those in the future, like grand kids, but for the unborn also who my ask the question,"what did Danny C do?"
link to the document failed?
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