October 30, 2015

Background
At the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Convention an impasse emerged. Nonetheless, wealthy nations finally committed to provide poor nations with $100 billion by 2020. So far, little or no cash has actually been disbursed, and as it now stands the world’s temperature is on track to increase by 4 degrees Celsius, not 2. Last week, at preparatory talks in Germany for the upcoming all-important Paris meeting in December 2015, it became painfully apparent that money threatens to collapse the Paris talks even before they begin. This time inaction is not an option.

Paying For Climate Change
The issue of who should pay how much for the cost of containing Climate Change and its consequences should be linked to the principle of proportional responsibility that all nations –producers and users- bear for not having factored into the price of manufactured goods the damage to the environment since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Accordingly, the cost of mitigating and adapting –insofar as is humanly possible- to the consequences of Climate Change should be viewed as a tax with penalties and interest levied by mother Earth on humans for disrespecting the environment, and even if we all pay our share the damage already done is so egregious our survival is not guaranteed. Furthermore, no one is blameless. Manufacturers profited financially, it’s true, but users greatly benefited from and enjoyed the many products and gadgets that improved productivity, created jobs, provided unprecedented comfort, safety and speed, and relieved billions from tedious, backbreaking labor. Thus, the tax should be allocated based on historic and current emissions. For example, there is no comparison between Malawi’s per capita carbon emissions, 18 Kg/year, and the United States, 17.5 metric tons/year.

The Political Landscape
It should be noted that the $100 billion agreed to in Copenhagen is public money, not private. That means all taxpayers within the contributing nations are being called upon, once again, to subsidize the shareholders and executives of the industries that profited the most from the Industrial Revolution. Even so, no one is presently floating the idea of levying a retroactive tax on accumulated capital to redress that slight. Public funds in today’s United States are almost always the product of bitter tugs of war between two parties that have not balanced a budget since 2001 and who routinely add to a perpetual debt –now exceeding $18 trillion- despite President Jefferson’s warning. As a result, unheralded items like Climate Change must compete with armies of lobbyists and well-funded political donors who believe themselves immune to its ravages. That explains why, despite its undisputed lethality, Congress has not seen fit to appropriate however much is realistically necessary to combat it.

Plans
That Climate Change is a clear and present danger, not just to the Unite States but to the entire planet, is not in dispute. What is not known is how severe the consequences are going to be, partly because a lot still depends on what we do, or perhaps more accurately, on what we fail to do. In 2013 and 2015 President Obama announced concrete actions to combat Climate Change. In March this year, Secretary Kerry stated, among other things, that the solution to the problem is “energy policy.” Regrettably, that will not resolve the chronic shortage of surface water in the Great Plains, the Colorado River basin and California and the apparently irreversible depletion of our largest aquifers. Unless this budding calamity is promptly addressed, inevitably it is going to lead to a massive decline in food production, forced mass migration from the southwest to the east, and a host of demographic, social and economic consequences. Barring unforeseen events such as a permanent El Niño that might transform southern California, Nevada and Arizona into a tropical rain forest, Climate Change is going to aggravate these water shortages, and no one anywhere has announced specific plans to address that. Therefore, if we really are serious about these issues, we’ll have to make some profound, unprecedented changes commensurate in scope and magnitude with the problem at hand. Firstly we’ll need adopt and implement a specific, feasible plan to replace fossil fuels and nuclear fission with hydrogen, even if it hastens the end of the petrodollar –which is in any event inevitable- regardless of the consequences. Secondly, we’ll have to muster the political willpower –which implies broad financial support- to fund that transition. Thirdly, we’ll need to create a new economic order based on the estimated $17 trillion budding renewable energy market, not oil, to combat the gaping abyss in the distribution of wealth and income that President Obama so eloquently described.

Financing Climate Change
Proportional responsibility requires a formula that calculates historical and current emissions by each country. The biggest polluters would be responsible for their portion of the accumulated CO2 but they would be relieved of the obligation to assist poor low polluters. Instead, private capital would be recruited and encouraged to invest there to help them transition to solar to produce and export hydrogen from electrolysis of seawater. That way wealthy countries with weak or intermittent direct sunlight or inadequate shorelines would have a stake in the $17 trillion renewable energy market, and low emitters would have a new infrastructure to help lift them out of poverty.