Durban Resets Expectations

Guest blog by James Dailey, a member of the Board of Climate Solutions and co-founder of Microenergycredits.com

Like a lot of people attending the climate negotiations in Durban, I booked my flight out before the official closing because I/we assumed that whatever emerged from the talks would be little more the thin gruel, tasteless and unfulfilling. Instead, the nations of the world have taken a remarkable step forward with a plan to have a legal agreement by 2015, led by the EU and notably involving China, India, and the U.S. They do this perhaps partly out of fear –as extreme weather event extreme weather event hits economies, and the beginning and end of the talks, with a one-two punch. But perhaps some of it is out of a sense that there is golden opportunity and inevitability in joining in the largest transformation in human civilization in at least a century. One investment banker I met in Durban called it a $1 trillion per year opportunity.

But there is a lot left on the table. There is poor recompense to the millions of the most vulnerable poor who are climate change’s first victims. With less resilient agricultural and economic systems, the climate crisis will put millions of people in danger from floods, droughts, and food insecurity. Its difficult feeling like enough was done when the religious communities describe this as a sin and crime against humanity.

The agreement doesn’t really recognize the dire warning scientists are now giving. While a target of less than two degrees global warming is a good one politically it doesn’t track with scientists now saying 1.5 degrees is too high, and, it may already be too late to achieve even that – given the massive investments in coal plants globally. China’s path of business as usual would have them pumping so much carbon into the atmosphere by 2020 that they’d be contributing 40%, approaching the emissions per capita that Americans emit.

Which brings me to the role of America’s obstructionism at these climate talks. The Obama administration may have avoided an agreement that brings this into the presidential campaign – but they’ve sacrificed something more important: America’s leadership in investing in a clean energy future and global credibility.

The debate globally isn’t about whether the climate crisis is real or not but between whether we can wait 20 years to address it or if a five year plan is too slow. The rest of the world is clearly reframing this as survival and opportunity and that’s why the next phase of this will be about large scale finance.

Nonetheless, I am cautiously optimistic long term because finance ministers around the world and large global investment funds are now pushing the message, insurance companies are hedging against 500 year events happening every few years, and large scale renewable projects are sprouting like fields of grain across Germany and China. By 2013 China may very well surpass the U.S. in installed solar power base, manufactured, by the way, with equipment imported from the U.S.

The knock on effects of addressing climate and energy security are jobs, and that is something that every politician can get behind. While those calling for climate justice may feel that the world ducked a responsibility to avoid the worst impacts, the fact that there is an agreement at all speaks to our shared sense of responsibility.

This deal in Durban may very well be the turning point for collective action.