It doesn’t matter how it failed, it matters there was the option to fail. Only carbon interested activity is free, all other behaviour is forced by circumstances.
"President "I don’t want to open the Pandora box." Says if parties want to open text, need to stay 2-3 more weeks" (tweet Lisa Friedman)
Ok, they are still bickering in DOHA about who gets how much money. All through the process people have tweeted how hard it was to get heard. The Phillipines deligate cried as he pleaded for his magetyphoon stricken countrymen. It’s sad, dramatic, there’s complex structure and meaning, many people totally live it, but the whole even misses its purpose entirely.
The tragedy of our generation is that it became dependent on marginal energy sources, fossil and nuclear. (Hermann Scheer)
Two people know to be early dismissers of a COP style process are Herman van Rompuy (Wikileaks docs) and Hermann Scheer (democracy now interview ), must be something to do with the name. It is quite obvious now there’s no way negotiations are going to lead to a solution. As long as money is part of the discussion it’s a farce anyway, because money has value only when you can use it to buy fossil fuels, meaning mitigation, adaptation is cash for big oil! Same for the carbon trade. A brilliant find, let’s trade, earn money, leverage, get rich. To what end? More access to carbon credit! COP18 is a bankers wet dream, and a great way to store leaders in their most useless state : disagreement.
COP18 serves, bankers, lawyers, the carbon industry, the idea that the global economy can be part of the solution
So what is the right approach? What does help? The question could be, is what is actually required something the COP18 participants can do? Can lawyers, negotiators, passionate advocates do anything to solve the climate problem?
The Olympics for negotiators..
The only way to move things in our present economy is to get credit, allocate it from government funds, and pay someone to do something. Banks are always in the mix influencing what action is taken by presenting one more risky than the other. They always get away with that because we all understand they protect their business, eventhough they have no business per se as intermidiaries, and they are supposed to serve the common good in return for our trust!
Most cashflow of banks occurs because there are fossil fuels
We now see a much more coersive and captive reality where you can’t really initiate anything without the financial system being ok with it, and the financial system clearly serves it’s biggest cashflow generator, the carbon industry. This is why we have an economic crisis, why the UK is in the dumps, why Spain, Italy, Greece is cut off, because of a fossil fuel crunch. But this means that the only mechanism of action is politically disinterested in climate action.
Of course the carbon industry could announce they only want to sell carbon to make reneweables, but that is not what the people in that industry are interested in.
But almost noone realizes that a climate action world economy is totally different from the present one. Noone considers that credit assumes resources, and resources have to come from somewhere. Chances are there are NO resouces if you have to work only with renewables. That means credit is not usefull, it is meaningless. What is meaningfull is acces and the ability to exploit existing known resources. Thinking without banks and carboncredit requires a reorientation to local affordabilities. Without carbon verly little can be done besides subsitence farming, let alone climate action. Only more renewables will make it possible to generate the flexibility and productivity we know today from such stuck position.
You can’t use fossil fuels if you want to really solve the climate problem
Climate action is something different from finding interesting schemes to profit from in our present economy. It can not use carbon fuels, it can not expect to succeed with them, so it makes no sense to start based on them. Saving fuel and energy efficiency are only usefull for the time until fossil fuels run out, then you’ll need renewables, so why not start pushing that now?
Its a race for survival, won by the ones with most energy
Instead of a global legal framerwork that fails, we need a globally adaptable action plan that secures our future ability to act and not descend into chaos.
Steps for true climate action
1. Create as much carbon free energy sources as possible
2. Fight and reduce the freedom, influence of banks and fossil fuels companies
3. Reduce all polluting behaviour with rationing and replacement schemes
4. Announce global achievements and reward the top achiever
5. Open up all patents with the provision the products can not be exported.
6. Teach different economics, focus on local action, local manufacturing
7. Help local communities deal with climate change by sharing knowledge and teaching skills.