Climate war game: Game concludes with a limited agreement
10:15 a.m.
The game ends. Delegates worked out compromises on the emissions targets, with regard to both India and China, and then spent another 45 minutes poring over the rest of the agreement. What’s remarkable is how fast a role-playing “game” turned into a seemingly interminable political and bureaucratic exercise. Notes were passed, objections were raised. No word was too small to dispute.
But United Nations Secretary General John Podesta finally rang the bell, acknowledging that a number of issues – including his own proposal to create a major new international fund for clean technology – were left on the table.
Significantly, the game ended without a binding agreement on emissions reductions. The United States and Europe committed to a 30 percent reduction in emissions by 2025, and all of the parties agreed to shoot for the same targets at a global level. But China, while endorsing the idea of numeric targets, did not actually agree to any specifics. India walked away with specific targets, but with some contingencies as well. And even these concessions might not have been possible without a substantial cash infusion from the West.
On migration, the countries agreed on the need to recognize climate refugees as such, while stressing that they must be distinguished from people who are displaced by other natural disasters, such as earthquakes. “Non-coercive repatriation” to the country of origin should be the preference, and international assistance should be forthcoming to smooth this process.
The draft agreement broadly supports new agricultural programs and regional partnerships for managing water resources, although there is little in the way of specifics. It would also create a new “International Disaster Relief Organization” to help coordinate emergency operations around the globe.
The complete agreement will be posted on the CNAS website.
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A realization that, barring an 11th hour change of mind, Homo "sapiens" may be unable to change its behavior, leads to reflection on the root causes of such outcome.
Of all the species on Earth, only the genus Homo has ever mastered fire, becoming Homo
Prometheus, proceeding to manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum, split the atom and travel
to other planets. Possessed by a conscious fear of death, craving for God-like immortality and
omniscience, the species has developed the absurd faculty to simultaneously create and
destroy, perpetrate the demise of terrestrial forests, extinguish other species and, lately, erode
the very atmospheric conditions that allowed its appearance in the first place. The biological
rationale that has transformed tribal warriors into button-pushing automatons capable of
triggering global climate changes or a nuclear winter remains inexplicable. The enigma is
related to the little-understood process of top-to-base causation, explored among others by
George Ellis, who states; “although the laws of physics explain much of the world around us,
we still do not have a realistic description of causality in truly complex hierarchical structures.”
(“Physics, complexity and causality”, Nature, 435: 743, June 2005):
The descent from greenhouse Earth conditions into glacial-interglacial cycles about 34 million
years ago, related to CO2 sequestration through the rise of the Himalayan and Andean
mountain chains, has allowed the flourishing of mammals and eventually humans on land. By
altering the composition of the atmosphere through carbon emissions, Homo Prometheus has
triggered a return of the Earth towards the greenhouse conditions that existed 3 million years
ago (mid-Pliocene: Dowsett et al., 2005; Overpeck et al. 2006) and, from current rates of
emissions, potentially tracking toward an ice-free Earth at a rate many species may not be able
to survive.
Homo Prometheus lives in a realm of perceptions, dreams, myths and legends, in denial of
critical realities (Janus: A summing up, Arthur Koestler, 1978). Humans have the privilege to
wake up for a brief moment from infinite universal time to witness a world as cruel as it is
beautiful, a biosphere dominated by the food chain. Just as the Australian kangaroos will never
learn not to cross the highways and be killed, so do humans blindly perpetrate a sixth mass
extinction in the history of Earth. In metaphoric terms, a reverse relation may exist between the
level of consciousness achieved by a species and its longevity, creating machines it can not
control. If looking into the sun may result in blindness, so, according to as yet little-understood
laws of entropy, the deep insights into nature that humans have achieved may bear a terrible
price.
While individual members of the species may have a finite ability to make choices, hence the
belief in free will, this cannot mask the blindness of the species that follows a course of
evolution it cannot comprehend. If the meaning of biological sanity amounts to life-enhancing
conduct, can Homo sapiens, polluting its planet, be defined as a viable species?
The sixth mass extinction may be understood in a number of ways, including:
1. Homo sapiens is a self-limiting species: overpopulation and over-exploitation of its food
sources will result in environmental deterioration.
2. Homo sapiens is unconsciously modifying its environment through the emission of
greenhouse gases in order to avoid the next ice age.
A truly intelligent species would have not overcompensated for this eventuality through the
emission of more than 300 Gigatons of carbon.
Homo sapiens, being controlled by an underlying natural intelligence and information laws it
only begun to perceive, has only a dim comprehension of the web of life, or Gaia, nor is the life
of the species governed by the sense of reverence toward Earth expressed by Carl Sagan:
"For we are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to
contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars: organized assemblages of ten billion
billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here
at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for the
Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient
and vast, from which we spring.” (Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980).
Where does hope come from?
The realisation of the enormity of the consequences of the short sojourn of Homo sapiens on
Earth challenges every faith and ideal humans have ever held. Existentialist philosophy allows
a perspective into, and a way of coping with, what defies rational contemplation. Ethical and
cultural assumptions of free will, which may apply in individual lives, rarely govern the
behaviour of societies or nations, let alone an entire species. But hope is possible on the scale
of individual lives. As for Sisyphus, Albert Camus’ hero, individual members of Homo sapiens
are rewarded by the emergence of a conscious dignity devoid of illusions, looking death in the
eye without flinching, grateful for a moment of awareness of this world. “Having pushed a
boulder up the mountain all day, turning toward the setting sun, we must consider Sisyphus
happy” (Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942).
Posted by: Dr Andrew Glikson (Earth and paleo-climate science) | August 6, 2008 01:46 AM