In Extraenvironmentalist #93 we speak with Mark Dixon to discuss his take on the COP21 Paris climate conference. We hear interviews Mark recorded at the meeting, including one with climate scientist Kevin Anderson on the problem with ambitious projections of carbon capture technology. We also discuss Mark’s conversations with the attendees who voiced their perspectives on the future of the planet’s climate.

Cross-posted from The Extraenviromentalist

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There is no true ambition or justice in a global climate deal that undermines the principles of sharing, equity and justice. But after the ‘COP-out’ negotiations in Paris, there is still every hope that the growing power of the people’s voice can usher in a more equal and sustainable world.

Now that all the world leaders, diplomats, lobbyists, and NGOs have returned home after COP21, environmental campaigners are still taking stock of the new climate deal agreed in Paris. In many ways, the newspaper headlines heralding a ‘major leap for mankind’ and ‘the world’s greatest diplomatic success’ were justified. The aspirational goal to keep temperatures at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is certainly more ambitious than expected, and much has been made of the ultimate goal of ‘net-zero human emissions’ in the second half of this century.

Despite the fanfare, however, it’s impossible to call the Paris Agreement an actual success in terms of environmental sustainability or global justice. Green groups have widely argued that the 1.5C aspiration is meaningless without concrete measures for hitting it, while the individual emissions reductions promised by world powers will not be sufficient to prevent global temperatures rising beyond 2C. We are still headed for a catastrophic rise of 3C, and even these existing pledges are not legally binding. So far from being ambitious in any real sense, there are no longer binding targets or meaningful carbon cuts obligated on rich countries—which is almost a step backwards from the Kyoto Protocol (itself deemed inadequate in 1997).

There is also no justice in an agreement in which no new money is pledged to help developing countries adapt to climate change and move beyond fossil fuels. The pre-existing pledge of $100 billion per year of climate finance is about one quarter of the sums needed, according to civil society analysis, and this again is non-legally binding and couched in vague language. As campaigners have long reasoned, it is not a question of aid, loans or charity; it is about the historical debt of rich countries to the majority world. Yet this was far from the basis of the Paris negotiations, where the obligation was shifted back onto poor countries and proposals for climate reparations were pushed off limits. At the same time, the final agreement dropped any reference to human rights or Indigenous rights in the main text.

A growing call for ‘fair shares’

On a more positive note, a global call for sharing is now a central theme among civil society activists who focus on environmental justice issues. Indeed the crunch point in the Paris talks involved—as ever—the vexed issue of how to share responsibility for climate change between developed and developing countries. Campaigners have meticulously articulated how fairness and equity is key to the success of any climate negotiations, as reflected in the major ‘fair shares’ civil society review of government pledges to reduce carbon emissions. Demands for rich countries to remember their #FairShares at COP21 was even a rallying cry of protesters who staged actions outside the talks.

As anticipated, the final agreement did not include a clear reference to a global carbon budget as a basis for targets, which is imperative for any discussion about how to fairly share the Earth’s atmospheric space between rich and poor countries. The talks spelled out no vision of equity or fairness; on the contrary, the United States did everything it could to undermine the landmark principle of equity in the UNFCCC negotiations—known as Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities—by using bullying tactics and bribery to get its way.

Instead of addressing the root causes of climate change and committing to the measures needed to reduce inequality and overconsumption, most world leaders continue to sanction an unjust economic system that is fuelled by fossil fuel extraction. There is an obvious contradiction in major industrialised nations signing the Paris deal on one hand, while pushing for environmentally damaging trade deals such as the TTIP and TPP on the other. As widely pointed out, there was no mentioning in the text of the word ‘fossil fuel’ (let alone the need to keep 80% of fossil fuels in the ground), and there was no reference to the global military industrial complex that is next to the fossil fuel industry in its global GHG emissions.

The polluters’ great escape

The latest climate agreement will be remembered in history as “the Polluters’ Great Escape”, according to one progressive analyst, since it weakens the rules on rich countries and promises no fundamental changes in how the global economy is structured. Far from discussing the difficult political, economic and social changes that are needed to tackle climate change in the near and longer term, the door is also opened once again to carbon markets and other false solutions that suit big corporations.

For all these reasons and many others, the real hope for building a more just and sustainable economic system falls ever more firmly on the shoulders of ordinary, engaged citizens. The last words of many environmental activists following COP21 can only be repeated: that the main obstacles to change are not scientific or technical, but social and political. That history will not be made in convention centres and government institutions, but on the streets in massive peaceful protests and direct actions. That we as people of goodwill are not yet strong enough to dismantle the power of global corporations, but there is increasing evidence that the movement for transformative systemic change is growing apace.

So even if the Paris Agreement failed to reflect the principles of sharing, justice and equity in anything near to their true form of global expression, the great challenge of the 21st century—to fairly distribute the planet’s resources within environmental constraints—has never been more clear or urgent.

As STWR’s Mohammed Mesbahi comments: “There are many committed activists who campaign with passion and intelligence about the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, to switch to renewable energy resources, to protect the commons, to live more simply and so forth. But they are a comparatively small number of people trying to do a job that requires the backing of the whole population. They’re on their own trying to do the job for everyone else, which doesn’t make sense when you listen to the warnings from scientists who say we’re heading for a climate catastrophe. Those scientists are not just talking to the governments: they are talking to us, you and me, the people of the world.

“Every family should be its own government when it comes to environmental issues today. We should become our own presidents and prime ministers who each plays their part in working to save our planet, as if we are all ambassadors for humanity.

“Most of all, we must carry on organising more protest actions, until those protests catch on and get bigger and bigger. We have observed how world leaders make many promises during these global summits, then go home and put on another mask for the business of making profits for global corporations. Hence we have to persist until those politicians understand that their agenda of commercialisation is incompatible with protecting and healing the environment.

“We have to scale up our existing demands for shifting money away from fossil fuels and armaments, towards climate finance and renewable energies. We know we have all the technology, all the ingenuity, all the money. But governments will not shift their priorities without enormous pressure from the public that is expressed through constant and peaceful mobilisations.”

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The current landscape — shifting from ‘what’ to ‘how’ post SDGs

Clarity on where we go with the SDGs is also lacking. As SDG advisor Alex Evans says, now that the Open Working Group (OWG) on the post-2015 SDG agenda has reported, “minds are shifting to the ‘how’ as opposed to the ‘what’ — and what a new Global Partnership on development might look like. There is a risk that the soaring ambition of the OWG’s Goals will not be matched by adequate action on the delivery side.”

Many of the answers on how to solve the challenges we face now on climate and the SDGs will need to come from society at large, from social movements, communities and citizens. This calls for a p2p revolution, the end of top-down and the beginning of people-power. The institutions of today can, and indeed must be involved in this revolution. But power needs to disperse and so does the conversation.

So delivering on the SDGs will require a host of tough issues to be resolved and delivered on including those same climate finance, loan and developing world support details so missing from Paris.

Other key issues which need to be included in delivering on the SDGs include; strong action on tax avoidance and subsidies, stretching private sector ambition and support for SD, recognition of natural resources like land, water, and the atmosphere as a special category of property right, with dividends from their use accruing to society at large, a radical overhaul of the financial system, consideration of a universal basic income and some fundamental questioning of issues such as the growth paradigm, limits of decoupling and the need to shift from consumerism to a world of intrinsic values and wellbeing.

This starting list of key SDG delivery issues represent radical changes to the status quo.

This changes everything — why we need to think ‘system reboot not plug and play’

As the post COP party hangovers start to wear off people are recognising the momentous, perhaps paradigm shifting, scale of the challenge facing us as we attempt to deliver on the highest ambitions from Paris. As Richard Heinberg has said post COP, the required transition is “not plug and play, its civilisation reboot”.

And as Professor John Foran puts it, “Despite their beautiful words, our leaders remained trapped in a broken system and a crashing worldview.”

Coming out of Paris IPCC scientist Professor Kevin Anderson has concluded that we have to make: “Fundamental changes to the political and economic framing of contemporary society…let Paris be the catalyst for a new paradigm.”

The social justice narrative of ‘system change not climate change’ has now gone mainstream with voices such as UNFCCC Chief Christiana Figueres now calling for ‘a new system’ at COP21.

Delivering on these radical changes will require a sea-change in the process of change. Policy-wonkery and lobbying may play a role but above all what is needed is a new society-wide Big Conversation on paradigm shift and systems change.

The emerging new economy vision

Many of these issues are the staple diet of those involved in the wider ‘new/next economy’ world which is the focus of the Real Economy Lab I convene.

This new economy space is a vibrant hot-bed of innovation. As Professors Gus Speth and Professor Gar Alperovitz of the Next System Project put it, “just below the surface of media attention literally thousands of grass roots institution changing, wealth-democratizing efforts have been quietly developing.”

Hundreds of movements, alliances and organizations around the world are experimenting with a new-economy – new ways of living, of making, of commerce and of ownership — open-coops, social solidarity, Transition Towns, Commoning, Sharing, initiatives from groups like the Club of Rome, Nef’s Great Transition, the Next System Project, the New Economy Coalition, Neon, the Just Transition movement of labour, Movement Generation and Edge Funders and many others.

But between the current policy landscape and this vision of the future lies an unmapped territory on which we need to start to plot a roadmap to system change.

Where do we go from here?

Very different actors inhabit the worlds of the current policy landscape and this emerging vision of a new system. Some bridge both worlds — but too few. What is needed is a common vision and narrative and an inclusive conversation we are all part of.

I see this as a journey. For a journey to be worth taking you need a roadmap. Right now we have only the slimmest of clarity and agreement on even the shape of the landscape we need to cross let alone where we want to get to. Many of us are too busy looking at our feet, fearful of stumbling, few ever get even a glimpse of a possible horizon let alone the peaks we need to aim for.

Those working in the foothills need to be helped to see a vision of where we need to head. Those with their heads poking through the fog need support to keep their feet in reality and real-politic.

Above all what will be needed is to take everyone with us on this journey. What that will require a new form of conversation built on deliberative, participative dialogue, open-enquiry and inclusiveness and powered by digital democracy.

This dialogue will need to bridge the here and now with a desirable and achievable future which is truly fair and sustainable for people and planet.

Whats crucial is that the dialogue of the deaf between so many of us needs to end and we need to find a way to develop one big conversation about system change and transformation.

Perhaps our attitude to this journey needs to take a hint from another of Marvin Gaye’s songs What Going On.

Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
C’mon talk to me
So you can see
What’s going on

The post The World Post-COP — System Reboot, Not Plug-and-play — Part Two appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The SDGs and COP21 raise more questions than they answer — 2016 will need to shift the debate to wider system change.

The current policy landscape
“Woo mercy, mercy me, mercy father
Ah things ain’t what they used to be, no no
Oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas
Fish full of mercury”

I was struck by the poignancy of Marvin Gaye’s 1971 poetry as I listened to broadway star and member of Hip Hop Hope for Divestment Antonique Smith singing Mercy, mercy me at an event at COP21 ten days ago.

The lyrics reminds us just how long it has taken us to wake up to the need for an end to the fossil-fool age and how, though 2015 was a good year in some ways, in others we have only just begun the real journey.

2015 saw at least three seismic shifts in the sustainable development world. For starters in September the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted by governments, setting a new developmental pathway towards 2030.

Next, by November over $3.4 trillion of assets had committed to divest out of fossil-fuels and invest in a new economy, supported by a diversity of voices from Christiana Figueres, HRH Prince of Wales, Leonardo Di Caprio, Desmond Tutu, Mark Carney and the Hip Hop Hope Caucus. And finally at the eleventh hour COP21 culminated in a global agreement to set us on the pathway to a new low carbon economy.

Not a bad year then? But the devil is in the detail. For many people both the SDGs and COP21 raise just many more questions then they answer.

Opinion is widely split between those activists and scientists who see COP21 as a sham and others hailing it as the greatest victory for civilisation. George Monbiot sums up much of the consensus on the outcomes from the talks, saying: “By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle. By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster.” Likewise the SDGs have been both lauded as a huge step forward and derided as fatally flawed.

My own feeling is that Paris was a success. Inside the negotiating halls I saw unusual alliances of policy makers, unions, progressive business leaders and NGOs finding common case in a way I have not seen before. The sight of the B Team’s Richard Branson holding a joint press conference with Kumi Naidoo was a welcome change from the old days of endless antagonism.

And outside around Paris I saw an ever stronger and more united civil society world emboldened to demand and bring about ever greater change. And the SDGs, though not perfect, at least represented a new, more consensus-based process of dialogue.

But wherever one stands on the details of the SDGs and the COP21 agreement, it seems to me that the biggest challenges we now face involve clarity on the ‘how’ behind the ‘what’. And, in my view is that clarity on those ‘hows’ will only come from a much wider and deeper examination of the need for paradigm-shifting system change.

Why the current landscape is not sufficient — shifting from ‘what’ to ‘how’

In principle COP21 has moved things on. At least the ‘what’ of the IPCC process, the shape of things to come, is now clearer. It rhetorically sets collective sights on 1.5 degrees, we can be sure that governments will be held to their INDCs by civil society, and $100bn of new money has in principle been committed to deliver on the agreement.

But many questions remain on the ‘how’ to achieve this. The COP outcome is still voluntary, its not negotiated with wider society, the INDCs arguably currently could lock us into at least 3degrees, the agreement’s mechanisms are weighted to ‘market solutions’ like trading rather than other solutions civil society favours and there is precious little clarity on where the $100bn will actually come from and in what form.

Perhaps that’s partly where the divestment movement comes in. As the divestment movement starts to shift its campaigning to focus on the ‘invest’ piece in 2016, it has already become clear even to the head of the coal industry lobby, that the fossil-fool economy is dying and that perhaps the world’s carbon traders are becoming the new slave traders.

But despite $trillions committing to some form of divestment, the DivestInvest movement has a long way to go to plug the investment gap and to integrate a wider equity and justice frame to its work.

The disjunction between the SDG narrative and Paris is stark, with COP21 failing to integrate key social issues into the text or sentiment of the talks despite these being central to the SDG vision. The framing of a Just Transition to a new economy was largely lost over the two weeks of haggling in Paris. Likewise fundamental pillars of sustainable development such as Climate Justice and equity were sidestepped as too uncomfortable.

Issues like consumerism are also largely absent from the SDG and climate agreements and Paris saw no confrontation of prickly questions such as what Professor Kevin Anderson says about the limits to economic growth relating to combating climate change.

Ignoring the views of civil society in this way is a mistake. As Naomi Klein said in her COP21 rally speech, the true leaders of system change are in the streets not in the negotiating halls.

These thorny issues won’t go away. The Divestment movement has been emboldened to go further and become more radical post Paris. And, as can be seen from the Too weak, too late opinion compendium, the failures of COP to include justice issues has strengthened the resolve and momentum of the climate justice movement.

This is part one of a two-part blog

Originally published in The Huffington Post

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I’m in Paris now, preparing to speak tonight about climate change. It is a parallel venue, not mainstream, called Place 2 B, but even here I am afraid my message is going to be controversial. You see, I think there are deep problems with the standard climate change narrative, which has equated “green” with carbon reduction.

One obvious problem with that is that horrible things can be justified with CO2 arguments, or tolerated because they have little obvious impact on CO2. This ersatz ‘green’ argument has been applied to fracking, nuclear power, big hydro, GMOs, and the conversation of forests into wood chips for biofuel. Now you might say these are specious arguments that depend on faulty carbon accounting (is nuclear power really that carbon friendly when you account for the immense amount of energy needed to mine the uranium, refine the uranium, procure the cement, contain the waste, etc.?) but I am afraid there is a deeper problem. It is that when we base policy on a global metric, i.e. by the numbers, then the numbers are always subject to manipulation by those with the power to do so. Data can be manipulated, factors can be ignored, and projections can be skewed toward optimistic best-case scenarios. This is an inherent problem with basing policy on a metric like tons of CO2 or GGEs (greenhouse gas equivalents).

Secondly, by focusing on a measurable quantity we devalue that which we cannot measure or choose not to measure. Such issues such as mining, biodiversity, toxic pollution, ecosystem disruption, etc. recede in urgency, because after all, unlike global levels of CO2 they do not pose an existential threat. Certainly one can make carbon-based arguments on all these issues, but to do so is to step onto dangerous ground. Imagine that you are trying to stop a strip mine by citing the fuel use of the equipment and the lost carbon sink of the forest that needs to be cleared, and the mining company says, “OK, we’re going to do this in the most green way possible; we are going to fuel our bulldozers with biofuels, run our computers on solar power, and plant two trees for every tree we chop down.” You get into a tangle of arithmetic, none of which touches the real reason you want to stop the mine — because you love that mountaintop, that forest, those waters that would be poisoned.

I am certain we will not “save our planet” (or at least the ecological basis of civilization) by merely being more clever in our deployment of Earth’s “resources”. We will not escape this crisis so long as we see the planet and everything on it as instruments of our utility. The present climate change narrative veers too close to instrumental utilitarian logic — that we should value the earth because of what will happen to us if we don’t. Where did we develop the habit of making choices based on maximizing or minimizing a number? We got it from the money world. We are seeking to apply our numbers games to a new target, CO2 rather than dollars. I don’t think that is a deep enough revolution. We need a revolution in means, not only a revolution in ends.

In other words, what we need is a revolution of love. When we as a society learn to see the planet and everything on it as beings deserving of respect — in their own right and not just for their use to us — then we won’t need to appeal to climate change to do all the best things that the climate change warriors would have us do. And, we will stop doing the awful things that we do in the name of stopping climate change.

Ironically, many of the environmental issues that seem unrelated to climate change, we are learning, actually do contribute to it. Take hydroelectric dams: they flood forests and wetlands, displace communities, and disrupt riverine ecosystems. But at least they provide climate-friendly electricity, right? Well, no. It turns out that dams and artificial reservoirs emit huge amounts of methane from the rotting vegetation that they generate, and reduce rivers’ ability to capture carbon.

Finally, let us admit that our knowledge of Earth’s climate homeostasis is quite rudimentary. While we assume that, say, digging gold out of a mountain has little effect on climate, other cultures disagree. A Brazilian friend of mine who works with indigenous tribes there reports that according to them, mining is a much bigger threat to the planet than CO2, because when metals are removed from the tropics and moved to the temperate zones, the planet’s energetics are disrupted. Even taking gold away from a sacred mountain can have devastating effects. A Zuni man I met told me that they believe that the worst thing is to take so much water that the rivers no longer reach the sea — because how then can the ocean know what the land needs?

Let us not be too quick to dismiss such ideas as superstitious fantasy. Time and again, indigenous people have proven that their “superstitions” encode a sophisticated understanding of ecology. While such ideas as “insulting the water” and “stealing the golden soul of the mountains” seem baldly unscientific, we may need to start taking them seriously.

I will end with a prediction. I predict that we will succeed in drastically reducing fossil fuel use, beyond the most optimistic projections — and that climate change will continue to worsen. It might be warming, it might be cooling, it might be intensifying fluctuations, a derangement of normal, life-giving rhythms. Then will we realize the importance of those things that we’d relegated to low priority: the mangrove swamps, the deep aquifers, the sacred sites, the biodiversity hotspots, the virgin forests, the elephants, the whales… all the beings that, in mysterious ways invisible to our numbers, maintain the balance of our living planet. Then will we realize that as we do to any part of nature, so, inescapably, we do to ourselves. The current climate change narrative is but a first step toward that understanding.

There is a lifestream of my presentation at about 7:15 or so Paris time, which is 1:15 EST. it is part of a series of speakers, so it could be a few minutes earlier or later.

Originally published at The New and Ancient Story

Lead image by Grant McDonald. Creative Commons

The post What We Do to Nature We Do to Ourselves appeared first on P2P Foundation.

While much of the momentum to fight climate change is focused on political channels, there are parallel efforts using law to force government to take specific, enforceable actions to reduce carbon emissions. It’s a difficult battle, but in recent weeks two notable initiatives have gained further momentum – a court ruling relying on the public trust doctrine and a new human rights declaration that has broad international support.

The court ruling is related to a series of lawsuits brought by young people invoking the public trust doctrine to force governments to protect the atmosphere. Orchestrated by the advocacy organization Our Children’s Trust, the Atmospheric Trust Litigation suits have been filed in all state courts and in federal courts.

On November 19, one of those lawsuits succeeded. A superior court judge in Seattle issued a ruling that strongly recognizes the public trust doctrine as a applying to the atmosphere.  The case sought to uphold science-based plans for carbon emissions reductions developed by Washington State’s Department of Ecology, as a way to protect the atmosphere for eight young people (the plaintiffs) and future generations.

The ruling is especially significant because it echoes a recent ruling by a New Mexico court that also strongly upholds the constitutional principle that the public trust doctrine applies to the atmosphere.

COP21 negotiators, are you listening?

The public trust doctrine is a ancient legal principle that requires government to act as a faithful trustee of resources that belong to the general public and future generations.  Historically, this has applied primarily to navigable waters. The Atmospheric Trust Litigation suits want the courts to apply the public trust doctrine to the atmosphere as well, thereby forcing state governments and the federal government to commit to specific actions to reduce carbon emissions.

Judge Hollis R. Hill in Washington State declared that “[t]he state has a constitutional obligation to protect the public’s interest in natural resources held in trust for the common benefit of the people.” He found the public trust doctrine mandates that the state act through its designated agency “to protect what it holds in trust.”  The judge also held that it was “nonsensical” to try to separate navigable waters from the atmosphere in applying the public trust doctrine because the two are inextricably linked.

The court validated the youths’ claims that the “scientific evidence is clear that the current rates of reduction mandated by Washington law…cannot ensure the survival of an environment in which [youth] can grow to adulthood safely.” The judge determined that the State has a “mandatory duty” to “preserve, protect, and enhance the air quality for the current and future generations,” and found the state’s current standards to fail that standard dramatically for several reasons.

The ATL lawsuits are potentially significant because they signal that even if the political branches of government will not uphold science-based climate policies to protect the public, the courts will.  We need more such rulings that the government has a constitutional obligation to protect the atmosphere as a public trust asset crucial for the survival of our children.

Draft Declaration on Human Rights and Climate Change

There is another important legal initiative that is gaining attention — the Draft Declaration on Human Rights and Climate Change. The Declaration, prepared by the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment, invokes some of the most venerable human rights statements in history before going on to present “an alternative formulation of rights that foregrounds human rights while simultaneously protecting the rights of non-human living beings and systems from climate harms.”

Here are the first six principles of the Draft Declaration:

1. Human rights and a profound commitment to climate justice are interdependent and indivisible.

2. All human beings have the right to a secure, healthy and ecologically sound Earth system and to fairness, equity and justice in the provision of climate resilience, adaptation and mitigation.

3. All human beings have the right to a planetary climate suitable to meet equitably the needs of present generations without impairing the rights of future generations to meet equitably their needs.

4. All human beings have the right to information about and participation in decision-making related to alterations to the physical environments they rely upon for their health and survival.

5. All human beings have the right to the highest attainable standard of health free from environmental pollution, degradation and the emissions of environmental toxins and to be free from dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system such that rising global temperatures are kept well below the tipping point of two degrees centigrade above preindustrial levels.

6. All human beings have the right to investments in adaptation and mitigation to prevent the deleterious consequences of anthropogenic climate change, and to timely assistance in the event of climate change driven catastrophes.

The Declaration is open for amendment until February 19, 2016. You can endorse the Declaration or suggest amendments by emailing Kirsty Davies at kirsty.davies/at/mq.edu.au.  It is already anticipated that the next draft will focus more explicitly on indigenous rights and emphasize “the presuppositional need for direct protection of the living order as a condition for fulfilling human rights in the era of climate change.”

Sign the Declaration today!

Originally published in bollier.org

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