Paris witnessed both the explicit terrorism of religious extremists on November 13 and, a month later, the implicit terrorism of carbon addicts negotiating a global treaty guaranteeing catastrophic climate change. The first incident killed more than 130 people in a single evening; the second lasted a fortnight, but can be expected to claim hundreds of millions of lives over the next century, especially in Africa.
But with three types of spin-doctors in the latest iteration of the annual U.N. climate talks, the extent of the damage may not be well understood. The 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has elicited reactions ranging from smug denial to righteous fury. The first reaction comes from « above » (the establishment) and is self-satisfied; the second comes from the middle (« Climate Action ») and is half-satisfied; the third, from below (« Climate Justice »), is justifiably indignant.
Last Saturday, as the French champagne was being poured, the establishment was quick to proclaim, in essence, that « the Paris climate glass is almost full – so why not get drunk on rhetoric about saving the planet? The New York Times candidly reported that « President Obama said the historic agreement is a tribute to American leadership on climate change » (and in a criminally careless way, that’s not wrong).
Since 2009, the U.S. State Department’s chief negotiator, Todd Stern, has successfully steered the negotiations away from four key principles: ensuring that emission reduction commitments would be sufficient to stop runaway climate change; making reductions legally binding with accountability mechanisms; fairly distributing the burden of reductions based on who is responsible for the crisis; and making financial transfers to repair weather-related losses and damages arising directly from this historical responsibility. Washington elites still prefer « market mechanisms » like carbon trading to paying their climate debt, even though the U.S. domestic carbon market collapsed in 2010.
Bank of America), Paris has seen the disappearance of these essential principles. And again, « South Africa played a key role in negotiating on behalf of the world’s developing countries, » according to Pretoria’s environment minister, Edna Molewa, who proclaimed from Paris « an ambitious, fair and effective legally binding outcome.
Arrogant fibbery. Collective Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – that is, voluntary reductions – will raise temperatures by more than 3 degrees. The word « ambitious » loses its meaning in the context of coal-based South Africa, given Molewa’s weak INDCs – ranked by the Climate Action Tracker as among the most « inadequate » in the world – and given that South Africa is home to the world’s two largest coal-fired power plants currently under construction, with no opposition from Molewa. She consistently endorses increased coal burning and exports (heavily subsidized), extensive fracking, offshore oil drilling, exemptions from pollution regulations, emissions-intensive corporate farming and rapid suburban expansion.
A second narrative comes from major NGOs that have mobilized over the past six months to provide moderate pressure points for negotiators. Their message is: « The Paris glass is partly full, so drink up and enjoy!
This line doesn’t just come from the predictable ass-kicking associated with petty-bourgeois vanity, looking up to power for validation, as found at the World Wildlife Fund and the Climate Action Network, with their corporate sponsorships. All of us reading this are often tempted down this path, aren’t we, because such unnatural neck-twisting is an ongoing occupational hazard in this field.
And such opportunism was to be expected in Paris, especially after Avaaz and Greenpeace endorsed the G7’s leadership position in June, when at their meeting in Germany, the establishment made an empty commitment to a decarbonized economy – in the year 2100, at least fifty years too late.
Worse than their upward gaze, however, major NGOs suffered a hyper-reaction to the 2009 Copenhagen syndrome. After making the establishment negotiators at COP15 believe they were saviors of the planet, NGOs mourned the devastating Copenhagen Accord signed in secret by leaders in Washington, Brasilia, Beijing, New Delhi and Pretoria. This agreement was quickly followed by a collapse of climate consciousness and mobilization. This alienation is often attributed to a rift among activists: a roller coaster of heightened expectations from NGOs and a drop in performance from the establishment.
Possessing only an incremental theory of social change, the NGOs that are toasting the Paris agreement now feel the need to confirm that they have done their best and have reason to continue in the same vein in the future. To be sure, the insider persuasion tactics pursued by the 42 million-member clientelist group Avaaz are certainly impressive in their scale and scope. But for Avaaz, « the most important thing is that [the Paris agreement] sends a clear message to investors around the world: investing in fossil fuels is a dead bet. Renewable energy is the profit center. The technology that will allow us to achieve 100 percent clean energy is the moneymaker of the future. »
Once again, Avaaz validates the COP process, the establishment negotiators and the global incentive structure of capitalism as the immediate causes of the crisis.
The third narrative is actually the most realistic: « The glass of Paris is full of toxic fairy dust – don’t you dare sniff it! The traditional position of climate justice (CJ) is to delegitimize the establishment and bring activism back to the grassroots sites of struggle, radically shifting the balance of power at the local, national, and then global level. But until this shift in power is realized, the UNFCCC COPs are nothing more than Polluter’s Conferences.
La Via Campesina was the clearest: « There is nothing obligatory for the States, the national contributions lead us towards a global warming of more than 3°C and the multinationals are the main beneficiaries. It was essentially a media circus ».
Asad Rehman coordinates climate advocacy at the leading global North-South CJ organization, Friends of the Earth International: « The reviews [of whether INDCs are being met and then need to be strengthened] are too little and too late. The political figure mentioned for funding has no bearing on the scale of need. It is empty. The iceberg has hit, the ship is sinking, and the band continues to play to warm applause. »
And not to forget the voice of climate science, to put it as bluntly as possible, James Hansen called Paris, quite simply, « bullshit ».
Where does this leave us? If the glass-half-full NGOs get serious – and I hope to be pleasantly surprised in 2016 – then the only way forward is for them to exert their substantial influence in the name of solidarity with CJ activists who are making a real difference, at the grassroots.
Close to home, the weeks leading up to COP21 witnessed potential victories in two major struggles: opposition to corporate coal mining-led primarily by women farmers, activists, and lawyers-in rural Zululand, bordering the historic iMfolozi Game Reserve (where the world’s largest population of white rhinos is threatened by poachers); and the people of South Durban fighting the massive expansion of Africa’s largest petrochemical port complex. In both of these attacks, the weapon of climate defense was part of the activists’ arsenal.
But only when these campaigns have conclusively done the job that the COP negotiators and NGO cheerleaders have just dodged – leaving fossil fuels in the ground and leading the way to a just, post-carbon society – can we raise our glasses and toast humanity with integrity. Until then, we need to tell the pimps at the Paris Polluter’s Conference to sober up and stop what will soon be seen as their fatal attack on Mother Earth.
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*Director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa
