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Homo Disruptus

Image Credit : FerdiEgb

Some straight-talking in the New Zealand Parliament (see below). But just what does he mean by “…[a]fter 10 millennia, especially the past two centuries, it is the moment of truth” ?

Our species is not “Home Sapiens”, it is “Homo Disruptus” and we’ve been interfering with the Climate for about 10,000 years.

This speech was made by [Green] Dr Kennedy Graham in the New Zealand
Parliament within in the last few hours.

To send him some appreciation his address is: –
kennedy.graham [at] parliament.govt.nz

C&C on the growing record: –
https://www.gci.org.uk/endorsements.html


“As the Minister made clear recently in question time, the state of play
is the Copenhagen Accord, with voluntary commitments to national cuts.
These are demonstrably inadequate to the science-based judgment of what
is required to avert failure, but we pretend that it is a useful start
to greater things. We are told that global emissions must peak within
about 7 years, and we know that the Accord is way short of achieving
that, so we mumble about bigger cuts later and avoid looking into our
children’s eyes.”

“Let us address some facts. To achieve a 2 degrees Celsius threshold, we
must reduce our global carbon budget from 50 gigatonnes today to 36 by
2020, and seven by 2050. The rich countries must cut from about 40 today
to 11 by 2020 and one by 2050. That is correct: we in the rich world
must emit only one gigatonne in 2050, out of the seven emitted by the
world that year. It is called contraction and convergence, and it is the
only way humanity will successfully deal with climate change. That is
when our moral and political standards will merge at the global level.”

https://www.greens.org.nz/speeches/un-climate-change-negotiations-cancun-and-new-zealand-dr-kennedy-graham

“I rise to address the issue of climate change and this Government’s
failure to develop adequate national policy to combat it. Climate change
has slipped below the threshold of daily media focus and that is the way
that this Government seems to want it.”

“The failure at Copenhagen to tackle the global threat head on has sent
the international community into a state of collective catatonia. We see
this in the lack of leadership from the UN itself, in the actions of
national Governments around the world, and in the attitude of much of
the public around the world. The problem we have is that Nature is not
disposed to wait for humanity to iron itself out morally and get its
political act together.”

“The poor countries rail against us for historical responsibility and
insufficient reduction targets. The rich countries fear the projected
population growth among the poor and insist that they enter binding
commitments before we sign on to medium-term cuts.”

“Humanity probably faces only two global threats: immolation through
nuclear conflict, or suffocation through global warming. The first is
the product of traditional enmity; the enemy was the other tribe or the
other nation. Climate change is the product of a new enemy: it is us.”

“We try to cut nuclear arsenals by changing the enemy’s behaviour; we are
required to cut carbon emissions by changing our own behaviour. It is no
surprise that we are not succeeding. Most Governments lack the political
courage to convey the magnitude of the climate change threat to their
peoples, and they lack the political insight to prescribe the required
global and national policies that are necessary.”

“Before, during, and since Copenhagen the threat of serious unpredictable
climate change has grown. Our scientists do not know when non-linear
change might occur, but they warn that tipping points exist. If the
precautionary principle is to mean anything, we must all move with
speedy purpose and resolve. Translated politically, that means we must
act not as an international community of states, but as a global
community of peoples who are represented by Governments. If the
difference seems vanishingly small, then we do well to act on it none
the less, lest our prospects of survival prove to be the same.”

“Our professional negotiators are rearranging the deckchairs,
contemplating whether we shall have one or two legal agreements, and
whether it will be next year or 3 or 10 years from now. Our political
leaders dampen our expectations with appeals to realism. We all suffer
from cognitive dissonance. Every so often we see the magnitude and
imminence of the threat, and it is simply too frightening to accept
individually and politically, so we basically return to business and
government as usual.”

“As the Minister made clear recently in question time, the state of play
is the Copenhagen Accord, with voluntary commitments to national cuts.
These are demonstrably inadequate to the science-based judgment of what
is required to avert failure, but we pretend that it is a useful start
to greater things. We are told that global emissions must peak within
about 7 years, and we know that the Accord is way short of achieving
that, so we mumble about bigger cuts later and avoid looking into our
children’s eyes.”

“Let us address some facts. To achieve a 2 degrees Celsius threshold, we
must reduce our global carbon budget from 50 gigatonnes today to 36 by
2020, and seven by 2050. The rich countries must cut from about 40 today
to 11 by 2020 and one by 2050. That is correct: we in the rich world
must emit only one gigatonne in 2050, out of the seven emitted by the
world that year. It is called contraction and convergence, and it is the
only way humanity will successfully deal with climate change. That is
when our moral and political standards will merge at the global level.”

“After 10 millennia, especially the past two centuries, it is the moment
of truth. For our part, New Zealand has to agree through treaty or by
voluntary declaration in advance to cut our national emissions
proportionately. That means we must cut from 78 million tonnes today to
56 million tonnes in 2020, down to 1.6 million in 2050.”

“That is the scale of the challenge before New Zealand. It is as well
that we face up to it now, not when it is too late.”



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Christiana Figueres : The Elusive Saucepan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWsQscb6lfM

https://unfccc.int/files/press/news_room/application/pdf/100806_speaking_notes.pdf

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has just held its regular half yearly conference to further the working parties of the Kyoto Protocol :-

https://unfccc.int
https://unfccc.int/2860.php

A number of Press commentators have been critical of proceedings, indicating that there has not been much progress at Bonn, and in fact the conference could show some ground having been lost :-

https://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9213b40-a180-11df-9656-00144feabdc0.html

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Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway recommend that grassroots Internet writers focus on Climate Change Policy, in this Climate Science Watch interview shot at Netroots Nation 2010.

The subject of government policies to deal with Climate Change borders on the excessively dull – which is why most Internet web loggers (or “bloggers”) don’t want to touch Policy even with a full HazMat suit on.

It’s the kiss-of-interest-death to try to open up discussions on Carbon Taxation, Cap-and-Trade, Cap-and-Share, Cap-and-Dividend, Cap-and-Giveaway, Contraction & Convergence, Kyoto2, Border Tax Adjustments, Clean Development credits, Carbon Intensity and the like.

Only really seriously geeky, mildly obsessive people really want to think about the Big Picture. And many of us get stuck in a corner of unworkable aspiration, where we know something has to change, we fix on just a snippet of the giant problem, and then we find we cannot communicate it well enough for others to understand.

For example – very public insistence that the Coal-burning power generation industry has got to cease trading doesn’t make it happen, despite excellent reasoning and even entire Climate Camps of resistance and protest amongst the activist community.

This is probably because (a) most people don’t understand how banning Coal fits into the bigger Carbon picture, (b) most people don’t know how to go about asking the right people to ban Coal and (c) most of the Coal-burning industry don’t want people to look into their business too deeply so they have invested lots of money in public attitude smokescreens. No, it’s not a “conspiracy”. It’s a documented public relations exercise. Just ask Naomi and Erik.

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Advancing Africa Big Picture Carbon Commodities Carbon Rationing China Syndrome Climate Change Contraction & Convergence Corporate Pressure Divide & Rule Emissions Impossible Global Warming Low Carbon Life Regulatory Ultimatum

One Billion High Emitters

Reflecting further on a PNAS paper by a group of authors that includes Professors Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow leads me to suspect that elements of its proposed policy framework are unworkable and may have unintended unethical consequences :-

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/07/02/0905232106.full.pdf+html

It also leads me to conclude that research partly financed by Oil and Gas companies may be part of the Climate Change policy problem – how to reach global agreement on a way forward.

“Sharing global CO2 emission reductions among one billion high emitters”, by Shoibal Chakravarty, Ananth Chikkatur, Heleen de Coninck, Stephen Pacala, Robert Socolow and Massimo Tavoni, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Volume 106, Number 29, 21st July 2009.

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Advancing Africa Big Picture Burning Money Carbon Commodities Carbon Rationing Climate Change Contraction & Convergence Emissions Impossible Global Warming Growth Paradigm Low Carbon Life Political Nightmare Realistic Models Regulatory Ultimatum Vain Hope

WBGU : Equity, Today : Agreement, Never

File under : “That’s never going to ever happen if the United States of America have anything at all to do with it”.

The illustrious German Advisory Council on Global Change, the WBGU, or “Wissenschaftliche Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveraenderungen” in longhand, have done some excellent work on proposals for a global Carbon framework.

As part of their 2009 paper entitled in English “Solving the climate dilemma: The budget approach” they came to some useful conclusions, but also some startlingly unworkable recommendations :-

https://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_sn2009_en.pdf
https://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_sn2009_en.html

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Colin Challen to Chris Huhne

Ex-Members of Parliament and ex-Ministers of Government usually have a lot to say about Climate Change and Energy. Colin Challen, formerly MP for Morley and Rotherwell, is a prime case in point.

What the world needs now is a new world order – a global framework for carbon emissions control – and that framework is Contraction and Convergence. Colin Challen has written a powerful statement to Chris Huhne MP, the new Minister for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and would like us all to co-sign it :-

https://www.gci.org.uk/politics.html

Naturally, I have already signed this letter, because I know that Contraction and Convergence has to be at the heart of future international negotiations on Climate Change :-

https://www.joabbess.com/2010/04/30/the-price-of-carbon/

I hope you can all co-sign the letter with me.