One of the most powerful storms to ever make landfall took place in this past week. Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines at Guiuan, East Samar on Nov. 7 with winds reaching 195 miles per hour, the highest ever recorded for a tropical storm. On Nov. 8, it laid waste to the former capital of the Philippines, Tacloban in the province Leyte, and so far, at least 2,344 people have been confirmed dead because of the cyclone.
As that country lay devastated, the annual United Nations climate summit began on Monday in Warsaw, Poland.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted as a result of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. The UNFCCC’s prime achievement was the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in 1997 and came into effect in 2005, with most industrialized nations apart from the U.S. committing to targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Industrializing nations were given non-binding targets that they could try to reach. The average target was a reduction in emissions by about 5 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2012.
Every year since 1997, there has been a UNFCCC conference, as global carbon emissions have increased from 24.4 billion metric tons in 1997 to 35.6 billion metric tons in 2012, an increase of about 30 percent. The biggest conference in this period was the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009, which was meant to come up with a course of action following the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. At the end of the summit, international media reported that climate talks were “in disarray,” as NPR put it. The Copenhagen Accord that came out of the summit could not practically have made a weaker statement: It “recognized” the scientific case for keeping the global temperature rise to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit but contained no commitments to reduce emissions.
Right now, our civilization is en route to cross the point beyond which the 3.6 degree global temperature increase, which will lead to the gravest effects of climate change, will become unavoidable. In fact, according to the International Energy Agency, without an agreement, carbon emissions are likely to result in a temperature increase of between 6.5 degrees and 9.5 degrees Fahrenheit by about 2050, which will lead to permanent dust bowl conditions over much of the American southwest and other parts of the world, the loss of perhaps 50 percent of the world’s biodiversity, mass starvation, and sea level rise to the extent of New York City being underwater by the end of the century.
But there is going to be no agreement. Looking at the tragedy in the Philippines and the prospect of tragedies of such magnitude increasing in the coming years, the only sane action would be give up all hope in the buffoons in suits and ties floundering in Warsaw right now. If the Philippines is the scene of a disaster right now, Warsaw is a crime scene, with criminals rubbing shoulders in superficial displays of well-meaning inaction that will condemn hundreds of thousands of people to death just by the time they meet again next year. At the end of Wednesday, the summit was described only as being “crucial” for laying the foundation for climate talks in Paris in 2015. But of course, a grand solution isn’t going to be put into effect in Paris either—the fiascos of the last decade should have taught us that—and we do not have the luxury for the meager level of urgency at which diplomacy works.
The status quo isn’t going to solve the problem … and by not solving the problem as it gets worse while continuing to masquerade as the source of the solution, it’s actually a part of the problem. The interests of individual nations have made it impossible for bodies like the U.N. to broker a transnational, government-led solution. Business determines technology: Our SUV’s killed the electric car. No one seriously talks about cap-and-trade saving the world anymore. Philanthrocapitalism happens only where good (whether or not intelligent) intentions invest—such as disaster relief efforts that will be supported by sentimentally affected people and naive entrepreneurial efforts that follow a short-sighted, reductionist ethos—but doesn’t strike the root of the problem. (Of course, it can be argued that capitalism, by being an economic model that mandates nonstop growth on a finite planet, is at the bottom of the matter itself, so, naturally, it wouldn’t strike the root., i.e. itself.)
At last year’s climate summit in Doha, Yeb Saño, a member of the Philippines’ Climate Change Commission, urged for action to be taken to end climate change while Typhoon Bopha hit his country, killing hundreds and leaving 250,000 homeless. It is past due that we lose confidence in diplomatic efforts like those that Saño called for, those of the UNFCCC and the existing paradigm in general. Given the debacles of what we have, the only option left is to explore the many alternatives that are already out there to be implemented. As Saño said last year, “If not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where?”