In case somebody had any doubts, Glasgow has confirmed it. The fight against climate change is institutionalized.
As the old man prison librarian in “The Shawshank Redemption”, the government’s fight against climate change is part of the Institution. And it is unable to piss without permission of the world’s economic machinery.
Institutionalized.
Like the face of Che Guevara, the anti-capitalist revolutionary icon turned into a souvenir product, an imprisoned flat visage in a T-shirt with a slogan kinda like “A desalambrar. The land belongs to those who work it” (maybe merger or confusion with Victor Jara).
Or like street music adapted by the Administration or the Treasury to remind you to pay taxes at the pace of hip hop: attempt to institutionalizing.
Content on climate change has been standardized in the news, adopted by leaders, and embedded in their discourse using the resort of taking the flag of a cause to lead it at convenience. And thus, better control the events or even turn them upside down in favor (Damage Control, from his point of view).
People hear grandiose words from the leaders gathered at the great summits about the need to deal with global warming. These are generic arguments that echo, by force, and, uttered by these great actors, reassure the masses who assume that the authorities realize the problem and will do something to solve it.
Some of the great actors: Former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (second left), Former Executive Director of UNFCCC — Christiana Figueres (left), Former Foreign Minister of France and President of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21) — Laurent Fabius, and Former President of France — François Hollande (right), celebrate adoption of Paris Agreement. United Nations.
Not so, friends. Not with the urgency that would be needed.
Economic lobbies dictate the implementation program and set their convenient pace to exhaust the returns of the goods they control and redirect the focus of their businesses.
Unfortunately, That is the principal interest that marks the fight against global warming, not the search for environmental balance or the rational protection of the earth’s future.
Kyoto Protocol brief
Kyoto, December 11, 1997, the industrialized countries committed themselves to a set of measures to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
United Nations says “The Kyoto Protocol is based on the principles and provisions of the Convention and follows its annex-based structure. It only binds developed countries and places a heavier burden on them under the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities’, because it recognizes that they are largely responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere.”
Remarkable features:
· The protocol agreed to reduce at least 5% in emissions of these gases in 2008–2012 compared to emissions in 1990. However, the commitment period of the Protocol was extended until 2020.
· The protocol establishes binding emission reduction targets for 37 countries and the European Union (EU), implicitly recognizing that, in 1997, they were mainly responsible for the high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere.
· The USA signed the agreement but, Congress did not ratify it. So its adherence was only symbolic until 2001, when it withdrew from the Protocol, not because it did not share the underlying idea of reducing emissions, but because it considered their application was inefficient.
· With the ratification of Russia in November 2004, after getting the EU to pay for the industrial reconversion, as well as the modernization of its facilities, especially the oil companies, the protocol entered into force on February 16, 2005.
· “Polluter pays” principle adoption.
What is the “polluter pays” principle?
In summary, “is the commonly accepted practice that those who produce pollution should bear the costs of managing it to prevent damage to human health or the environment. For instance, a factory that produces a potentially poisonous substance as a by-product of its activities is usually held responsible for its safe disposal. The polluter pays principle is part of a set of broader principles to guide sustainable development worldwide (formally known as the 1992 Rio Declaration ).”
Doha Amendment
Doha, Qatar, on 8 December 2012.
During the second commitment period, Parties committed to reduce GHG emissions by at least 18% below 1990 levels in the eight-year period from 2013 to 2020; however, the composition of Parties in the second commitment period is different from the first.
Wait, attention, I would like to point out that when we talk about percentages of 5 or 18% of emissions reduction, it is concerning 1990 levels, when they were not exactly low, but this is the chosen and accepted reference, based on reliable metrics.
What is a COP?
The word ‘COP’ stands for ‘Conference of the Parties’. In the climate change sphere, ‘the Parties’ are the governments which have signed the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC). The COP brings these signatory governments together once a year to discuss how to jointly address climate change.
The COP is hosted by a different country each year and the first such meeting — ‘COP1’ — took place in Berlin, Germany in 1995.
Paris Agreement, COP21
UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, on 12 December 2015.
The Paris Agreement works on a five-year cycle of increasingly ambitious climate action carried out by countries. Every five years, each country is expected to submit an updated national climate action plan — known as Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC.
The Agreement is a legally binding international treaty. It entered into force on 4 November 2016. Today, 192 Parties (191 countries plus the European Union) have joined the Paris Agreement.
The Paris Agreement provides a durable framework guiding the global effort for decades to come. It marks the beginning of a shift towards a net-zero emissions world. Implementation of the Agreement is also essential for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Glasgow, COP26
Glasgow, Scotland, on November 2021.
This logo-header reflects the intentions of the meeting.
On the last day, almost last minute, to reach a minimum agreement, the goal of “to eliminate” emissions was toned down and replaced by “to reduce”.
At first glance, 30 years of margin did not seem a very ambitious goal, but not even that. All this set-up to end at the starting point.
That is what we were saying: institutionalized issue (or as Greta Thunberg says: bla bla bla…).
Let us pass this window!
This is the great journey of the summits against climate change: from the “polluter pays” of Kyoto (Rio in fact) to the “right to pollute the same as those who have already polluted so far”, of Glasgow.
We needed Net Zero 2030, and Net Zero 2050 promise has been unfulfilled, not significantly compromised.
Forgotten.
Depressing.
So we gotta move …
We must move beyond the “polluter pays” as an instrument of strategic planning and leave it exclusively as a disciplinary instrument.
As a management tool, it was fine at some point, when there was no other option, in Kyoto, but it’s time to move on to the next screen. We can no longer afford special safeguards for anyone.
The “polluter pays” only makes sense as a corrective measure, it can no longer be applied in the current context as an effective measure to reduce emissions.
Emissions have to stop, there can be no more compensation to developing countries in the form of discount vouchers for polluting, because:
1. Developed countries take advantage of them to continue polluting elsewhere.
2. There is simply no margin left to pollute more, so there can be no question of paying to pollute. Now the price for polluting is infinite.
3. Compensation to developing countries is necessary, for the pollution produced for so long by industrialized countries, for the harm to the rest of the world, and for limiting the scope for production by depleting fossil natural resources and GHG emission capacity. Not in the form of more pollution rights, for God’s sake! But in clean economic investments in those countries.
The economic predation vice
After all these years of apparent concern for the environment, it is clear that the actual worry of the ruling negotiators is to scratch a little time to continue with the vice of economic growth at all costs, marking all the tempos of an addictive pathology: the lack of control, denial, false recognition, unconscious self-destructive behavior, and finally conscious but irrepressible self-destructive behavior.
We cannot give up the welfare state, they say from their altar, speaking on behalf of nearly 8 billion humans, half of whom have no access to a toilet.
They are confusing economic growth with economic predation.
It is not a question of discussing who has the right to pollute or how much to pay to continue polluting a little more to compensate for what the pioneers of pollution have polluted. It is a matter of guaranteeing the right of living beings to live with natural and decent conditions!
As naive as this phrase sounds, it makes sense to utter it after so many years of sugary sterile meetings.
We have placed all our hopes in saving the planet from our threat at the summits against climate change — climate disaster — and in our rulers who should represent humanity as a whole.
We can hear words aligned with the general feeling. They say that the situation reported by scientists must be heard, remedied, and can no longer be denied. But then, goals are set for 2050 or beyond, in terms of declarations of good intentions, with virtually no real commitment.
Xi Jinping and Joe Biden shake hands
Other great actors
Believe me! That surpasses them in every way!
That is why they choose to offer their best profile for the photo and put on a face of … calm, all controlled. Cheeeeeese.
Tick. Institutionalized. A little more time. We postpone commitments. Take the jet and head home.
A bit more time? Seriously?
No sirs. There is no time!
Please allow me to digress for a moment, do not miss “Don’t Look Up”. It’s the best parody I have seen since the last Monty Python one. Just swapping a comet impact for a simmering warming, the rest is just as crazy as the madness that’s going on.
Thanks for reading
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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