Climate schizophrenia

The USA is a mighty strange place. It produces some of the world's best scientists and most effective technology entrepreneurs. It also produces a political culture dominated by money and fiercely hostile to anything that challenges the power of the ruling elite.

Only in the USA do we see so many powerful politicians in simple denial of the facts that world temperatures are rising and will continue to rise unless we active decisively. It's not because the USA is magically exempt from the consequences of climate change. Quite the contrary:

Overheating:  A study by US scientists showed that US residents' exposure to temperatures over 35 degrees will increase 4 to 6 fold within 30 years. The increase is due to both climate change and population growth.

Sea-level rise:  A recent study by Princeton scientists has confirmed predictions that sea-level will rise 1 metre by 2100 and continue to rise thereafter. The land on which 30 million Americans live will ultimately be lost to the sea. Threatened cities include Boston, New York, Miami, New Orleans Long Beach and even Sacramento.

But all that's decades, even centuries, in the future. Is the problem a kind of short-sightedness?  Well not really. Here's what's under their noses.

Drought.  California is in the fourth year of a severe drought, the worst in its history. This has produced forest fires that have killed six people and destroyed 1,000 homes (New Scientist, 26/9/15, p5). The effect of climate change is easy to understand here. Apart from just drying out the vegetation it makes precipitation fall as rain, which runs off, not snow, which would replenish the underground aquifers.

Or is the USA still so obsessed with the Middle East that nothing else registers? Again no.

War.  Syria's civil war began with protests in cities like Homs and Hama in 2011. Conditions in these cities had been exacerbated by Syrians seeking refuge from the 2007-11 drought, the most severe on record. And the severity of that drought was due to - have you guessed? - climate change. Actually Syria's rainfall has been declining for about fifty years whilst its population has risen four or five fold in that same period.

Of course, it's never just climate change. Population growth, rising consumer demand, religious extremism, government policies - or the lack of them - and just bad luck are all part of the causal chain.

It's just that so many US leaders refuse to see the obvious for fear that they'd be obliged to support policies of restraint that would threaten their comfort and the profits of their corporate sponsors.

But you knew that, didn't you?

The Global ConDominion?

In my Emergency Braking scenario I consider the possibility that a major power which I call Maverick (probably the US or China) becomes so concerned about climate change that it acts unilaterally to stop it. There's another, at least equally plausible, scenario in which the USA and China act together. Here's how it might play out.

It's 2020 and GHG emissions have continued to increase. China has invested heavily in renewables and the EPA has regulated carbon emissions. Even so, we're digging and burning more coal each year.

Meanwhile a research team at the University of Sao Paulo in collaboration with scientists in London, Beijing and California has created a fine-grained climate model which links climate to weather. They predict that if, given global warming, certain conditions occur the Atlantic and Pacific weather systems will synchronise and throw tornados and typhoons of extraordinary strength at the coasts of the US and China. The conditions do occur and promised storms arrive on schedule causing unprecedented damage and loss of life.

The US president phones the Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party, which is still in power but Communist in name alone. They agree that the delays in addressing climate change have been folly and that the world faces a planetary crisis. Both also consult their domestic allies and opponents. The Republican party tries to resist but is cowed by the threat of several major corporations to switch funding to the Democrats.

Within a month the leaders of the US, China and the EU meet in Iceland and after two days announce their shared determination to stop climate change. The two days have in fact been spent finalising a secret treaty whose effect becomes apparent on their return home. Their first actions are to announce that coal production will be phased out within 7 years and to accelerate the development of renewables and nuclear power. Barriers to both, such as requirements of local consultation, are relaxed by executive order. In the US the presidential order is reluctantly confirmed by the both houses of Congress. In the EU the Council of Ministers issues the orders and prepares for lengthy dialogue with the Parliament.

A new Planetary Crisis Mitigation treaty is drafted within 60 days and signed by the major powers in 30 more. It creates a new UN Agency, the UNPCM Agency, with almost unlimited powers to regulate emissions and overrule national and corporate investment decisions that effect emissions (which is essentially all of them). The governance structure is complex (Kafka would be proud of it!) and it takes years for people to realise that many of the functions of national governments have passed to the UNPCMA. A secret court system (with some similarities to the TTIP courts) makes challenges to the UNPCMA slow, expensive and futile. 

In parallel the leaders of the USA and China hold bilateral discussions with their main allies. The usual diplomatic verbiage is produced but the underlying messsage is stark: Every country should join the PCM treaty immediately. Those that stay out will be subject to escalating trade and diplomatic sanctions with combined military action as a back-up.

The UNPCMA acts quickly, converting the national and EU coal closure plans into global plans, making these plans legally binding and creating continental energy agencies that will build continental-scale super-grids to share access to renewable power sources. In Europe these include British wind, Norwegian hydro, German solar and Italian geothermal.

The UNPCMA also starts urgent feasibility studies for geo-engineering plants. Plants that extract atmospheric CO2 by burning biofuels and burying the CO2 are initial favourites.

By the end of 2021 it's clear that the plan is working. Greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric concentrations are down - though not by much. Most countries have signed the treaty and most of the exceptions, eg North Korea, are too small to matter. There has been strong popular resistance to the treaty in most countries causing seven countries to suspend their constitutions and twenty more to introduce martial law. 

In 2022 Bahrain announced its intention to renounce the treaty but the parliament reversed this decision following a US-supported invasion by Saudi Arabia. Variations of this scenario, some rather bloody, played out in Venezuela and Indonesia.

In 2023 the G20 announced its determination that the world should return to national sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law "as soon as circumstances permit". It was widely understood that 'circumstances would not permit' for at least twenty years and that the Western model - democracy, corporations, markets and political liberty - would be honoured only in the breach. National planning bureaucracies, supervised by the UNPCMA, were increasingly established and effective in all countries.

So what do you think? You don't like it?

Neither do I. But by 2020 - or 2030 - it may be the ONLY scenario that can work. We know that the window for more orderly mitigation measures is closing. This scenario would show the failure of environmental politics. More, a human failure to read the writing on the wall and act while there was enough time to avoid catastrophe and preserve our liberties.

But even a failure, as with defeat in war, leaves choices to be made. This might look like the least bad
choice.