Emissions Gap? Climate Negotiations? Our Future Is Up To Us
First Take on UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report, Climate Talks, and Why We Will Create a Better Future
Let me state this as simply as I can.
The future is up to us. Our future is up to us.
Not foolish politicians who try to take their country backwards. Not politicians who barely want to move us forward with their finger in the wind. Not the doomsters. Not the Big Producers of Polluting Products. Not computer models and their scenarios. Not fate. Not the international climate negotiations.
Us. Together.
We need to keep this at the forefront of our minds when seeing news accounts about the international climate talks, which start today, or when reviewing any of the major reports published ahead of or coinciding with these talks like the Emissions Gap report from the UNEP. The future is up to us. It is not already baked.
Where We Are and How Far We’re Off
This year’s Emissions Gap report shows us how much more we need to be doing to overcome climate change.
The graph below (with my hand-written additions) gives us a visual sense of how far off we are right now and where we must get to.
The report puts our situation plainly:
On the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, the message is clear: only decisive, accelerated GHG emission reductions can align the world with the goals of the Paris Agreement and limit the escalation of climate risks and damages that, already today, are severe, and hit the poorest and most vulnerable the hardest (p. xii)
This is a point I’ve been hammering away on: we need speed and scale of transformation. Justice demands it. Hope requires it.
And the only way we’re going to get it is if the Climate Movement becomes big and broad and active enough — 400 million worldwide by 2030.
Only by combining our moral power with our people power will our demands become our reality: to overcome climate change (i.e., achieve 1.5 with minimal overshoot) by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhance wellbeing for everyone and everything.
The 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change Can’t Succeed Without The Climate Movement
As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement I continue to believe that its framework is a useful one. Frankly, given political constraints around the world and the fact that nation-states must work together to solve this international problem, it’s the only way this was going to work.
Climate is a global problem and so there must be cooperation between nations to overcome it. That’s the strategic significance of the international process and negotiations.
But in this voluntary framework where each nation determines what its level of climate action and ambition will be, called “nationally determined contributions,” the international process and negotiations will never get us where we need to be. It is unrealistic to think they can.
Important, incremental gains at the margins can be achieved — but nowhere near what we need for victory. To suggest this visually in terms of emissions and temperature, below I’ve added a hand-drawn comment to the same graph to emphasize the best we can probably hope for — which is nowhere near enough.
Without strong political pressure within each nation for speed and scale overcoming climate change will never happen. And without The Climate Movement becoming what it needs to be — 5% of a population by 2030 — we won’t have the people power needed to push government leaders to do what needs to be done.
In other words: no us, no success.
The Paris Agreement framework isn’t failing. It will continue to play an important role. But it can’t succeed without us.
The Climate Talks Are Not Where We Find Our Hope
As you hear about the climate negotiations some of you might be thinking: “Wow. That’s where all the serious people are; that’s where the real action is.” So in this scenario, you’re not serious. At most a bit player. Unserious, frankly.
I’ve got great news for you — you’re wrong!
You don’t need to be there to be the most important person in the time and space you inhabit. The place where you need to be is the place where you are right now.
As a Climate Action Artist-Athlete, your most important Olympian Field of Action is the people you know, the people you see everyday, those you come in contact with regularly: family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, social media friends. Only you can be you. No one else can play your part.
It comes down to this: the most strategic thing we can do is grow and improve The Climate Movement. The most strategic things you can do is help others become a part of the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world. Help folks you know and are connected with affirm the Climate Movement Promise.
Our hope is not to be found in the climate negotiations. Our hope is to be found in making The Climate Movement into what it needs to be. Our hope is found in The Climate Movement joining forces with the other three Catalytic Sources of Transformation to create The Catalytic-4. Within The Catalytic-4 The Climate Movement is first among equals. We must ensure the others are playing their parts as we push for strategic synergies between The Catalytic-4.
We are the hope we’ve been waiting for. Ours is a time for regular folk to become heroes together.
We are hope-creators and future-makers. We are making the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our future come faster. We are making hope happen.
The future is ours.
If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, including our 10 Movement Values. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.