18 Dec Thoughts on the Climate Negotiations in Lima

By now, many of you have heard about the conclusion of the UN’s COP 20 in Lima. The representatives and negotiators of 196 countries that make the UN conference of parties worked past their Friday, December 12, 2014 deadline through late Saturday night to come to an agreement.  The draft agreement coming out of COP 20 was quite weak and requires all countries to come up with their climate change plans ahead of COP 21 in Paris in 2015 when a global agreement would be negotiated and adopted.

Although weak, it is still forward movement that 196 countries around the world agreed to do something.  To me, it speaks to the growing awareness of the urgent need to respond to climate change.

This awareness is growing across sectors, and perhaps the fastest among large corporations. Our own President helped set the tenor of discourse in Lima by forging an agreement between China and the US, without which, I don’t think we would have had even the weak agreement that was adopted.

Nigel Sizer of the World Resources Institute, who some of you might recall speaking at SXSW Eco in 2013, shared his cautious optimism with me in Lima. "We are losing 50 soccer fields of forest every minute around the world. We are seeing significant human rights abuses against indigenous leaders fighting for their home and environment, murders of leaders speaking up against deforestation. …because of climate change we are seeing the beginning of a global recognition that protecting and restoring forests and restoring the rights of indigenous forest leaders are key pieces of addressing climate change globally".

But even as there is a rising global awareness in the world across most countries, including the US, and advances towards a global agreement in 2015, along with unprecedented bilateral and multilateral agreements, there is a serious disconnect.

And, this may be my most urgent and important takeaway from COP 20. Most of the world doesn’t understand the urgency and the science of climate change, and specifically the non-linear relationship between emissions, global temperature rise and a changing climate (to be discussed later). Most of us are waiting for governments to act and corporations to act. Even if we get a global agreement in Paris, and provided that it is a serious agreement, very few people understand that the agreement doesn’t go into effect until 2020. That is simply not soon enough for the current carbon emission trajectory we are on. The planet has been here for 4 billion years and will remain for another 4 billion years. What is going to be the state of our biosphere and of humankind? That is where it will take the likes of those on this list to lead the actions necessary to avert a global climate crisis.

That ought to be the urgent discussion. But only if we were first, truly aware. Not to end on a pessimistic note during the holiday season, I remain an optimist and so find me to know why.