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Preface

This is part 4 of my multi-part Essay Series on Climate Change. Again, this was originally published at TOS, but I have cut the up original, edited it and have changed some things a bit (a lot) editorially

Part - 1 The Blind Leading the Blind
Part - 2 Systems Overload
Part - 3 Permafrost

Politics as Usual - The Paris Agreement

What's that saying... same shit different day?

Much of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change is about “mitigation” and the potential for a technological solution, such as technologies extracting CO2 from our atmosphere, which we have known about since humans developed submarines, to kill one another.

While the Paris Agreement is a step in the right direction, the reality is this, everything we basically know today about the potential for disaster, maybe not in as much fine detail, we knew 25 years ago and not much has changed, especially since carbon levels have risen since then, to over 400 ppm. Something not seen in the past 2-3 million years. Hello, is there anybody in there, just nod if you can hear me....

One of the findings(12) from the Paris Agreement I find completely and utterly hypocritical, like most "political" agreements (this one is non-binding) is this:

Extend the current goal of mobilizing $100 billion a year in support by 2020 through 2025, with a new, higher goal to be set for the period after 2025;

Extend and pretend, where have we heard this before?

Well gee, what a way to put your money where your mouth is, no? A 100 billion huh? Well, gee, and think, that is pennies on the dollar compared to the kind of financial effort that will be required if our (humanity's) goal is for only a 1.5 C rise in global average surface temperatures. ( the arctic has already passed it, just saying...)

While 100 Billion dollars a year might seem like a lot of money, which it is in a certain context, however it pales in comparison to the amount money governments around the world spend to subsides the fossil fuels industry. Consider an IMF survey that estimated those subsides cost (13) at $5.3 trillion US dollars in 2015.

Let that sink in, if your natural “data sink” (brain) is not overloaded enough already, like our climate systems are. $5.3 trillion dollars to subsidies the fossil fuel industry, which is killing the planet (well, the environment anyway).

MMM yummy stuff!

While I'm not the most educated person, I would have to say the "math isn't that hard figure, to realize that subsidizing these industries for the exploration, extraction, processing, production, transportation, and distribution of fossil fuels, to the tune of $5.3 trillion dollars in one year alone, is a slap in the face to the rest of humanity.

Especially considering we are very close to, if we haven't already passed, one or more “tipping points”. We should have been spending 100 Billion a year, 25 years ago, when climate change was on the world(14) agenda.

We have known about this for a very long time, and have not made any real, meaningful progress.

From International Energy Agency(15):

Four-fifths of the total energy-related CO2 emissions permitted to 2035 in the 450 Scenario are already locked-in by existing capital stock, including power stations, buildings and factories. Without further action by 2017, the energy-related infrastructure then in place would generate all the CO2 emissions allowed in the 450 Scenario up to 2035. Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.

Slow Death - (ahem, incrementalism)

We are two and half decades behind in transforming our energy infrastructure and haven't really done much, other than change a few regulations and improve energy use in some products (cars, appliances and such), to stem the tide of climate change in any meaningful way. This doesn't bode well for assessing humanity's ability to respond to this crisis.

I hate to say it, but reality is reality, and there is no denying it, incremental change or the continuation of the status quo, will simply kill off humanity. While I'll probably die before all of humanity, or most of it anyway, your children's children will be living in a {insert one of those very bad expletives you can't say on TV here} MAD MAX world.

For the last 25 years it has been politics as usual, with run away capitalism. If it is not obvious that the “status quo” hasn't worked, well you must be blind or deluded and need mental counseling. I'm not being snarky, I'm being totally serious!

We can not afford to continue down the same road we have traveled for the last 30 or so years. We can no longer afford to offer pennies on the dollar while subsidizing the very industries that are strangling our environment for commercial and private gain, at the expense of humanity.

We need a WWII like mobilization effort and we need to tax the "economic" elites and their "corporations" like we did back during WWII. How will this impact business you might ask? Guess what, I really couldn't give a hill of beans, and neither should you! Gee, I don't know, but if we are all dead, there will be no consumers, no one to man the factories, no one to run the robots, no one to produce the electricity business need to open their doors, got it?

Whether business profit or not, should not be our deciding factor in the equation of saving humanity in this Shakespearean tragedy playing out before our eyes out in real time, because 1) we have let things go too long without any REAL, meaningful, dramatic action that has been, and is currently required for just achieving, much less sustaining, a 1.5 C rise in average global surface temperatures. And 2) which is what I believe is the most THE important reason of all, we get only one chance to get this right. There is no wait and see. We blow it, and we're burn toast.

While this may be an odd thought, consider while many of the uber rich could (might) survive, their children, who haven't a clue as to how to skin a deer, grow food, or build shelters, Iif there will be any deer or other animal life left on this planet), will be clueless! Are we (humanity) really going to rely on the "clueless children" of the economic elites of this planet, for our (humanity's) survival? (Rhetorical)

But more importantly, right now our current expletive in chief really, really wants to cement his "legacy". ( and seal his fate to history as the best moderate republican to ever hold office. )

According to the WSJ:

The opposition in the presidential race makes it almost impossible Congress will vote on the TPP before the election, but President Barack Obama and other officials eyeing the pact as a legacy are promoting the possibility of a 2016 vote after the election.

“A new administration comes in—it doesn’t matter which one—trade is not going to be an immediate priority for the next couple of years,” said United Parcel Service Inc. Chief Executive David Abney, a member of the council.

One of the administration’s goals is to unify the business world as much as possible. Technology associations sent a letter Tuesday to congressional leaders backing passage of the TPP this year.
(emphasis mine)

Namoi Klein, author of This Changes Everything, lets us know just exactly how she feels about Obama's TTP trade deal!

This is pathetic. A betrayal. For real, folks. Memories of how Big Green helped push through NAFTA. #NoTpp #TPPhttps://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/651050606094749696 ...

 — @NaomiAKlein

From ThinkProgress.Org:

His organization, as well as many others, say the TPP protects multinational corporations that profit from fossil fuels. Some have argued that under the TPP — as with the North American Free Trade Agreement — companies will be able to sue countries that enact laws to limit fossil fuel extraction or carbon emissions, if it interferes with profits. The deal also will lead to the rubber-stamping of export facilities for natural gas from fracking and will prevent the U.S. Trade Representative from ever including climate change action in trade deals, Ganapathy said.

Snip

“The White House seems intent on telling everyone environmentalists like this deal, but the truth is by handing even more power to Big Oil, letting massive corporations throw tantrum lawsuits at governments who dare to scale back emissions, and prolonging our reliance on fracked gas, there’s no question that the Transpacific Partnership is an absolute disaster for our climate,” Ganapathy said in an email.

The TTP, in a nut shell, "officially" gives the world over to the multi-national corporations. All sovereignty is gone. Corporate lawyers decide the fate of humanity, unless we do something about it.

Why do anything about Climate Change now, we can push it off onto our children's children so they can live in a Mad Max distopian world, which I'm told would actually be a soft landing for humanity at this point. they will love it I tell ya! Nah, no point, we would rather suffer than actually do something. That's just human nature no?

Politics as usual and the continuation of the current neoliberal economics and incremental is painting a bleak future for humanity, ie slow death. And according to Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson in this clip, it's going to be a bloody one too.
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You think things are bleak? You depressed yet? Well, wait till part 5 and, metaphorically, I'll smack up side the head a time or two . But don't fret now, in part 6, I lay out some bright spots in our future. However don't get comfortable, we're going to have to really work for it.

And for those that are putting their shoulder to the grind stone and their bodies on the line...

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RR

References:

12 - C2ES
13 - I.M.F.
14 - UNFCCC Report
15 - International Energy Agency