Why we don't act quickly Enough

 

Exponential Growth

 “Climate change is proceeding exponentially on a J curve. J curves means at first a gentle curve but eventually a point is reached where growth just goes straight up.  Climate change is growing exponentially because of tipping points that release huge extra amounts of GHGs.  Exponential growth, the professor explains, “ if you have two drops of water in a baseball stadium and then four and then 8 and then 16 and each increase takes a minute how full will it be one minute before it is full?”  The surprising answer is it will be half full one minute before disaster.”

I heard this early in my climate work.  It has haunted me.  It has haunted me because it seems quite clear to me that who would worry when there is 16 drops of water? Or even notice?  That by the time it becomes clear that there is a lot of water accumulating…you are pretty far into the process.  And then by the time it is half full you have no time to fix it.   This has been my fear through out the 15 years I have worked at this…that I am one of the early worriers – worrying about mere inches of water on the floor of the stadium…but by the time others become worried will it be too late?  The only option appeared to become the proverbial person holding the sign that says “The world is coming to an End” and hope to convince enough people that you are sharing important information, not wearing a tin foil hat.

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Over 10 years ago my then husband and I were taking a retreat to Whidbey Island.  Whidbey Island is small and beautiful, sort of sleepy community, not one that I think of as a hotbed of activity.  To my surprise as we drove by a grange hall a sign out side said they were having a climate exercise inside.   I was so overcome by curiosity that I convinced my husband to come check it out with me.

 

What they were proposing was quite fascinating.  It was before the Paris COP and they were proposing an exercise to help us understand how complex the negotiations were, what the different interests were that had to be balanced.  They assigned each of us to be a country.   About a third of us were big and powerful countries like the US, Russia, China, Germany and the UK.    Another third were smaller industrialized countries like Canada, most of the UK, Australia, Saudi Arabia, etc.   Then another third were undeveloped countries in primarily the global south:  South African, South American, India, Vietnam, etc.  Each third met together for the a first round of negotiations.

 

We were told that we must each representing our country negotiate what pledge of carbon reduction we would make over the next 10 years.   I was explained that we had to get back down to 350 parts per million CO2 and that our pledges would be calculated to see how far we got in first round negotiations and then there would be a second round.   It was also explained that if we made not reductions and continued with business as usual that we would hit some very high number like 430 parts per million and that it would spell disaster for Earth – tipping points that would be unavoidable.  

 

I had been assigned to a third world country.  My husband was China.  In the little caucus of undeveloped countries I at first wanted to make a big reduction but other neighbors pointed out that we were poor because we had never developed, that if we gave up access to energy we would never rise out of poverty – and that it was us who had done all this pollution and created this big problem.   So we decided we would agree to only make a very small reduction 5%.  However, we also decided to ask that the wealthy countries that already had more complex technologies – give us the technologies that would allow us to skip dirtier stages of development and go green to begin with.   We felt if they would do that we might be able to make deeper cuts.

 

My husband told me later he had fallen into his role as China very easily.   He reported that the sense at his table was ‘We have the power, we want to do the least we can so as to maintain our standard of living.”   They proposed a 10% reduction.   I forget what the other group proposed.  I know the most powerful countries responded to our offer to make deeper cuts if they gave us technology but saying Well how were they going to get the money to do that?  I remember that after each group reported their pledge our facilitator calculated and reported that this would only get us down to 410 and asked us to go back to a second round of negotiations.

 

Our group spent only a minute together we quickly agreed our offer had been more than fair and that we were not going to change it.  In fact we were infuriated by how they had responded so dismissively to us.  So instigated by me we decided to spend our time protesting and we went picketing around the rich countries.    My husband’s personality came through (which I don’t think the real China would have done) he had heard the reasonableness of our argument and tried to argue that they should help us.  The other countries were unmoved and therefore got no where during that round – just arguing.  The middle group slight increased their pledge.  In the end we had only gotten to 400 part per million.    (Reality check 10 years later of business as usual we are now at around 410.)

 

I left shaken.   Were we too good of actors?   If this was the best compromise people who were climate activists could come to….what hope was there that the real countries would act boldly?  I was not surprised therefore when the real Paris COP did not get down to needed reductions in pledges.    If it had been a longer exercise and the protests had intensified ….what would have happened then?   What if protests had broken out inside those very countries that were foot dragging?