I was reading through Jason Hickel’s lengthy and creative article What Would It Look Like If We Treated Climate Change as an Actual Emergency? He mentions a new campaign THE FOSSIL FUEL NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY, which has been endorsed by 100 Nobel laureates, several thousand scientists, and Fridays for Future. The treaty is a “global initiative to phase out fossil fuels and support a just transition.”
Perhaps it’s been written about before but it’s the first I’ve heard about it. At any rate, here’s your action item for the day.
Climate change, like nuclear weapons, is a major global threat.
Bold and immediate action is needed to address the climate emergency.
The main cause of the climate emergency is fossil fuels. According to the latest IPCC report, coal, oil and gas are responsible for 86% of all carbon dioxide emissions in the past decade.
Phasing out fossil fuel production, and fast-tracking progress towards safer and more cost-effective alternatives, will require unprecedented international cooperation in three main areas – non-proliferation, global disarmament and a peaceful, just transition.
Organizations, corporations, and individuals are called upon to endorse the treaty.
Hickel writes a compelling piece on what a climate emergency looks like
As temperatures approach 3 degrees, 30-50% of species are likely to be wiped out. More than 1.5 billion people will be displaced from their home regions. Yields of staple crops will face major decline, triggering sustained food supply disruptions globally. Much of the tropics will be rendered uninhabitable for humans. Such a world is not compatible with civilization as we know it. The status quo is a death march. Our governments are failing us—failing all of life on earth.
He describes the “yawning gap” between pledges (easy to make) and policies (count as actions) and identifies capping and scaling down fossil fuels “on a binding annual schedule” with the goal of dismantling the industry by mid-century as the path towards a sustainable future.
Fossil fuels, which account for three quarters of greenhouse gas emissions, have got to go, and the rapid scale back would mean drastic changes to our economy.
Think about it. Imagine next year we cut fossil fuel use by 10%. And then the following year we cut it by another 10%. And so on the next year and the next. Even if we throw everything we have at building our renewable energy capacity and improving energy efficiency—which we must do as a matter of urgency—there’s no way we can cover the full gap. The truth is that rich countries are going to have to get by with less energy. A lot less.
How can we possibly manage such a scenario? Well, in the existing economy it would be sheer chaos. The price of energy would skyrocket. People would be unable to afford essential goods. Businesses would collapse. Unemployment would rise. Capitalism—which depends on perpetual growth just to stay afloat—is structurally incapable of sustaining such a transition.
“It is possible to keep global heating under 1.5 degrees, but it requires that we shift into emergency mode.”
First, we have to nationalize the fossil fuel industry and the energy companies, bringing them under public control, just like any other essential service or utility. This will allow us to wind down fossil fuel production and use in line with science-based schedules, without having to constantly fight fossil capital and their propaganda...
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Second, we need to protect people by establishing a firm social foundation—a social guarantee. We need to guarantee universal public healthcare, housing, education, transport, water, and energy and internet, so that everyone has access to the resources they need to live well…
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Third, we need to tax the rich out of existence. As Thomas Piketty has pointed out, cutting the purchasing power of the rich is the single most powerful way to reduce excess energy use and emissions. This may sound radical, but think about it: it is irrational—and dangerous—to continue supporting an over-consuming class in the middle of a climate emergency...
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Fourth, we need a massive public mobilization to achieve our ecological goals. We need to build our renewable energy capacity, expand public transport, insulate buildings, and regenerate ecosystems. This requires public investment, but it also requires labor...
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Finally, we need a strong commitment to climate reparations. Rich countries have colonized the atmosphere for their own enrichment, while inflicting the majority of the costs onto the global South. This is an act of theft—theft of the atmospheric commons on which we all rely—and it needs to be repaired...
It Won’t happen on its own
This is how we stop climate breakdown. But it won’t happen on its own. Asking politely for the ruling class to act is not going to cut it. It will require an extraordinary struggle against those who benefit so prodigiously from the status quo—as has every movement that has ever changed the world, from the Civil Rights movement to the anti-colonial movement. It requires doing the hard work of community organizing, building wall-to-wall solidarities strong enough to hold up against political attacks. It requires forging alliances between the environmentalist movement and the labor movement, and across national borders, sufficient to pull off coordinated strike action. This decade is the linchpin of history. We cannot afford to just sit back and wait to see what happens. We have to capture political power where we can, or otherwise force incumbents to change course.
What a great read. Well worth the time.
NDN Collective and Indigenous Climate Action Respond to COP26
Summary of COP26 outcomes:
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False climate solutions such as carbon trading, “nature-based” solutions, carbon capture and storage, and market-based mechanisms negotiated this year are upheld in the final decision document. The rules of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement governing carbon markets remain. Governments and corporations created loopholes, or offset mechanisms, that commodify the air and lands and will contribute to ongoing land theft and violations to human and Indigenous rights and allow emissions to rise.
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Indigenous Peoples succeeded in getting language on Indigenous and human rights integrated into Article 6, however, there is no legally binding responsibility to adhere to this language.
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Glasgow Climate Pact is the first ever climate deal to explicitly plan to reduce unabated coal, meaning coal-burning done without any carbon capture or storage. While this is a step in the right direction, we need a complete phase-out of all coal and fossil fuel subsidies to keep global temperatures below 1.5C.
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World leaders from over 100 countries also promised to stop deforestation by 2030. Our critique here is that 2030 is not urgent enough. We need to end deforestation now.
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A planned scheme to cut 30% of current methane emissions by 2030, confirmed by over 100 countries.
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450 financial organisations, with shared financial control of $130 trillion, have agreed to back technology such as renewable energy and financing away from fossil fuels.
Dave Roberts Tells us:
Much was made of this and other shortcomings of the final agreement, but there’s a weird kind of disconnect around this commentary. What people seem to forget is that the UNFCCC has no real power to enforce anything and there isn’t the unity needed among participating countries to create a binding target with real consequences.
This was the origin of the Paris Agreement: the realization that the best the UNFCCC could do is structure and publicize voluntary national goals and commitments. The idea was to do with transparency and peer pressure what decades of adversarial negotiations couldn’t: steadily increase ambition.
A shorter way of saying this is that a COP agreement can’t make a country do anything. Whether and how fast India phases out coal has nothing at all to do with what its diplomat says in Glasgow and everything to do with domestic Indian politics, which have their own logic and are only faintly affected by international politics.