Typhoons, Climate Negotiations and a Reality Check

Typhoons, Cli­mate Nego­ti­a­tions and a Real­i­ty Check

- by Rachel Smolk­er, Biofuelwatch

The lat­est round of cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions are open­ing just as we are hear­ing the sto­ries and view­ing images on the news cov­er­age of the dev­as­ta­tion wrought on the Philip­pines by Typhoon Haiyan (aka Yolan­da).  Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the last round of cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions, COP 18 in Doha were sim­i­lar­ly punc­tu­at­ed by a dev­as­tat­ing typhoon, Bhopa (aka Pablo) that also struck the Philippines. 

Cli­mate sci­en­tists long warned we would expe­ri­ence more and more extreme weath­er events. Well, here it is, just as pre­dict­ed. In the Philip­pines, thou­sands of lives have been lost. Bod­ies are float­ing in the streets — moth­ers, fathers, babies, chil­dren. Not just mean­ing­less sta­tis­tics from some far away unre­al place, but real peo­ple: loved ones and friends whose lives have been smashed and oblit­er­at­ed, while the world around them — trees, land, coast­lines, and the crea­tures that inhab­it that part of the world — have been flat­tened, blown away and drowned. 

Any­one with a mod­icum of empa­thy for oth­er liv­ing beings must feel deeply troubled. 

Last year, the lead nego­tia­tor from the Philip­pines, Yeb Sano broke into tears at the nego­ti­a­tions in Doha describ­ing the dam­age inflict­ed by typhoon Bhopa, and today in War­saw, as the death toll from Haiyan con­tin­ues to mount, he announced that he would com­mence a vol­un­tary fast “until a mean­ing­ful out­come is in sight.” A few weeks ago, the chair of the UNFCCC, Christi­na Figueres broke into tears bemoan­ing the fail­ure to take steps to ensure future gen­er­a­tions a liv­able planet. 

So far, tears and emo­tion­al pleas appear inca­pable of break­ing the grid­lock that epit­o­mizes the UN cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions. That grid­lock is to a large extent cour­tesy of the Unit­ed States obstruc­tion­ist strate­gies. In the ear­ly days of the nego­ti­a­tions our rep­re­sen­ta­tives demand­ed that mar­ket based approach­es be made front and cen­ter, threat­en­ing to refuse par­tic­i­pa­tion oth­er­wise. Then the U.S. refused to rat­i­fy the pro­to­col in any case. Then our rep­re­sen­ta­tives insist­ed that we would do noth­ing what­so­ev­er that could “harm the Amer­i­can way of life” (aka inter­fere with ruth­less prof­it mak­ing eco­nom­ic growth). The sub­text of that state­ment being “no mat­ter what the con­se­quences for oth­er peo­ple’s lives else­where”). Then our pres­i­dent waltzed into Copen­hagen and arro­gant­ly under­mined the hard work of an inter­na­tion­al con­sen­sus, ignor­ing pro­to­col to ram through an Amer­i­can ver­sion of an “agree­ment.” The pur­pose appar­ent­ly was to remove the fangs from any seri­ous com­mit­ments and stir the smol­der­ing embers of dis­con­tent and dis­uni­ty that were already in place as nations around the world faced com­pro­mis­es they were already reluc­tant to accept. 

And still, the Unit­ed States mean­while remains shame­ful­ly mired in Tea Par­ty muck, bare­ly able to even utter the words “cli­mate change” in gov­ern­ment cir­cles much less do any­thing what­so­ev­er about it.  End­less time and ener­gy is dithered away debat­ing whether or not cli­mate change even exists! Oba­ma made nois­es in the wake of Hur­ri­cane Sandy, new­ly empow­ered by his reelec­tion.  But adding insult to injury, the solu­tions he offered up were large­ly a laun­dry list of false solu­tions: In line with his “all of the above” ener­gy strat­e­gy he called for more off­shore oil drilling and more hydrofrack­ing. Not a word was spo­ken about halt­ing the mas­sive sub­si­dies going into fos­sil fuels. With a nod to the coal indus­try, he advo­cat­ed for “clean coal” based on car­bon cap­ture and stor­age mythol­o­gy, and praised efforts to expand bioen­er­gy in spite of ever mount­ing evi­dence of the harms. While envi­ron­men­tal­ists took some solace in the fact that he at least called for caps on some coal plant emis­sions, his goals were so weak as to be con­sid­ered a token ges­ture. And even those pathet­ic lim­its are being chal­lenged by Tea Par­ty extrem­ists and the coal industry. 

The same kinds of false solu­tions are vying for atten­tion under the UN nego­ti­a­tions, where cor­po­ra­tions have been hand­ed the reins. They do what cor­po­ra­tions do, name­ly seek prof­its.  So the solu­tions on offer are large­ly cen­tered on enhanc­ing busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties (and avoid­ing real reg­u­la­tions that could ham­per prof­it making). 

What would we actu­al­ly want from a UN agree­ment?  Bind­ing tar­gets, severe enough to actu­al­ly make a dif­fer­ence would be great, if ter­ri­bly and per­haps irre­triev­ably late, but the prob­lem as always is in the details of how to achieve those tar­gets. The UN, like most gov­ern­ments, is falling deep­er into the pock­ets of cor­po­ra­tions who remain obsessed with mar­kets as the tool of choice. Not sur­pris­ing giv­en that car­bon mar­kets have allowed pol­lut­ing cor­po­ra­tions to get off the hook and even to prof­it from trade in thin air. Fol­low­ing quite a few years of time wast­ed exper­i­ment­ing with those mar­kets, it should be crys­tal clear by now that they will not deliv­er on reduc­ing emis­sions. Per­haps some good old-fash­ioned reg­u­la­tion, with teeth? That seems almost a laugh­able sug­ges­tion in the U.S. where, unbe­liev­ably, there is a Supreme Court chal­lenge, backed by the coal indus­try, aimed to block the EPA from reg­u­lat­ing emis­sions from smokestacks.

Besides car­bon mar­kets, the oth­er ral­ly­ing call is for more renew­able ener­gy. That too is has great appeal to cor­po­ra­tions, who envi­sion car­ry­ing on busi­ness as usu­al while per­haps plug­ging in a few wind­mills. Even the envi­ron­men­tal groups like to call for renew­able ener­gy ad nau­se­um. It sounds nice, but nobody has both­ered to seri­ous­ly debate what IS renewable.

Hence, a lion’s share of renew­able ener­gy is com­ing from bioen­er­gy — con­vert­ing more land, grow­ing more crops and tree plan­ta­tions, even cut­ting remain­ing diverse forests to burn for elec­tric­i­ty.  The cli­mate, bio­di­ver­si­ty and human rights con­se­quences are clear­ly not good, and no “solu­tion” to glob­al warm­ing.  Besides, renew­ables cur­rent­ly sup­ply only a tiny fac­tion of glob­al pri­ma­ry ener­gy, accord­ing to the Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency — about 13 per­cent in total. But that is large­ly from bioen­er­gy (10 per­cent), which includes tra­di­tion­al uses of wood (for cook­ing, etc.) which com­prise about 7 per­cent. Wind and solar mean­while con­tribute a mere 1 per­cent to total pri­ma­ry ener­gy sup­ply. It would seem dan­ger­ous­ly unre­al­is­tic to pre­tend we will replace the remain­ing 87 per­cent of glob­al ener­gy sup­ply with wind and solar, or some oth­er renew­able, in short enough order to effec­tive­ly pro­tect our cli­mate. In the end there is no “mag­ic” ener­gy source that will enable us to car­ry on as we are with busi­ness as usu­al.  We will at some point have to rec­og­nize that the laws of nature are uncom­pro­mis­ing an there is no alter­na­tive oth­er than to focus hard on dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduc­ing human con­sump­tion of finite plan­e­tary resources. Doing so while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly address­ing the needs of mil­lions liv­ing in extreme pover­ty with­out even their most basic needs met will be a mas­sive chal­lenge. But there real­ly appears to be no oth­er path to success. 

That is, except per­haps in the minds of those who arro­gant­ly believe they are in con­trol of nature. Cir­cling at the edges of the Typhoon Haiyan car­nage are the cli­mate geo­engi­neers, eager for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to ped­dle their wares: Des­per­ate mea­sures are need­ed for des­per­ate times, eh? If all else fails, we can just inject sul­phate par­ti­cles into the stratos­phere. It might even be less expen­sive, some argue. Or if we are wor­ried about the weath­er, we can just engi­neer the clouds to shine a bit brighter and pre­vent the next Haiyan from hap­pen­ing. Not only do those approach­es seem guar­an­teed to make things worse, not bet­ter, but also we have to ask WHO will be in control.