WHAT SUCCESS IN PARIS LOOKS LIKE

The critical registers for success of the upcoming Climate Change Conference in Paris have now been articulated.  If these outcomes are achieved, we as a global citizenry will have a viable shot at resolving the situation.  

This is key, both in the matter of the focus it can potentially bring to the conference itself, and for the opportunity this brings to the ordinary citizen to influence the success of the conference, both prior and during.

These outcomes are:
1.  An all-country commitment to full de-carbonization by 2050
2.  A global alignment on mobilizing carbon pricing as the means to full de-carbonization

3.  The establishment of a network of civil society partners accountable for ensuring that the commitments are realized 

This is extraordinary in the opportunity it opens up for direct citizen engagement in this process and in our future.  

Our job now is to reach the citizenry of the world, to let them know what success in Paris looks like, and to offer everyone everywhere the opportunity for their voices to be heard and to have their voices count.

The Right Crisis

The real crisis is not the crisis of climate change.  That crisis is already happening.  The crisis is the crisis that is screaming to be created and at present does not exist.  That crisis is the crisis that will come into existence only once we have promised to effectively mitigate the existing crisis, i.e. to ensure that the global temperature increase will not exceed 2 degrees Celsius.  This new crisis will be fomented by planting firmly in our future the promise of limiting the temperature increase to 2 degrees and working back from that future, rather than the current strategy of working from the past.

What is missing is the promise to limit the temperature increase to 2 degrees.  Absent that promise, the crisis that is wanted and needed will remain un-fomented, and with that, the tremendous and critical opportunities afforded by that crisis.