Sixty Days to Save The World

In sixty days, the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference will be underway.  In the strange trenches of pre-conference negotiating and writing of a draft agreement, some progress has reportedly been made--principally by reducing the early draft of 84 pages to 20.

Progress towards the goals of the agreement has been more substantial.  The United States and China continue to up their game, especially with China's surprise announcement of a cap-and-trade scheme for carbon.  The big missing piece in the global picture also started to move into place when India announced its own commitments and plans to address the climate crisis.  India had been resisting such action, resenting the burden placed on developing countries, but it is especially vulnerable to early and dire effects, so constructive engagement became a better policy.

Some warn however that the goals announced so far aren't sufficient to bring future heating under the 2 degree C goal.  That is the announced goal of the UN conference, reflecting the scientific consensus that this is the upper limit of global temperature rise before global heating gets completely out of control.  So there's negotiating ahead, with the real goal of getting some kind of meaningful binding international agreement for the first time.  The idea is to turn the ship around, and hope that near-future efforts will pick up speed in time.

Another good sign that this is happening is that the UN development goals for the future that seek to dramatically reduce global poverty, are also sustainable development goals that make clean energy and other efforts to address the climate crisis an integrated part of the plan.  This is a recognition that there cannot be a conflict between economic development and climate crisis efforts, as well as a recognition of the link that Pope Francis emphasizes, between the climate crisis and those who will suffer most from its effects: the world's poor.

Americans may be surprised that addressing the causes of the climate crisis is embraced by nearly every nation in the world, and by every political party in every country that has real elections (although of course the means advocated vary widely.)  The only exception is the US Republican party.

 So rigid and extreme has this party (and this "brand") become that it's big news when a few GOPers finally dare to take the climate crisis somewhat seriously. But polls suggest a majority of Republican voters at least see the threat of the climate crisis.  Something's got to give, sometime.

The political leadership of the party is also increasingly out of step with major elements of its constituency.  In a notable announcement, six major US banks urged global leaders to make a climate agreement in Paris.  Many corporations support efforts to address the causes of global heating, but this is a significant advocacy for the global commitments themselves.

Meanwhile, the effects of past carbon pollution are about to become even more obvious, according to a British study, which says that the world will be much hotter this year and next as those effects combine with other climate phenomena.

But the kind of news that either scares people into denial or scares them into support and action is this: photos of visibly starving polar bears. It's one thing to read that it's probably too late to save the polar bears from the effects of the climate crisis, but it is another to watch a species die, especially one so close to ours.