As you’ve been reading, Green Canaries Kevin Tuerff and Valerie Davis are winging their way to Poznan, Poland, this week to serve as delegates to this week’s United Nations climate change talks.
While our readers are pretty green-minded, a lot of Americans are wondering what role a group of diplomats meeting and talking about carbon emissions could possibly serve in averting greater climate change.
In short, why should we care about what happens in Poznan?
1. We’re running out of time.
Even if you don’t believe climate change experts who talk about an ice-free planet – frighteningly, not that distant a possibility – global temperatures are on the rise. The body of evidence tying temperature shifts and related changes in our environment to man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is growing every month.
And if there’s anything being made clear at the conference I’m writing from – Austin’s Clean Energy Venture Summit – it’s that most if not all of the solutions the world is envisioning take time. So the longer the world debates, the longer we wait to take action, and the more delayed the effects of those actions will be.
Building renewable energy generation and transmission capacity, changing our transportation fleets from primarily gas and diesel to hybrids and plug-ins, encouraging clean development and sustainable management of our natural resources, changing consumer behavior… all of this takes time, money, and most importantly, the political and individual will to change our own behavior.
2. We’re all in this together.
Unlike the industrial sources of acid rain, the major air pollution issue of the 1980s, the sources of GHG emissions come from sources large and small, spread out across the planet.
The representatives meeting in Poznan are primarily there to negotiate a global target every nation can agree to. Until every nation signs off on that target, individual countries can’t devise a long-range strategy for reduction. They can each say, “oh, we’ll cut our emissions this much by this date,” but they’ll have no idea if they’ll fall short or overshoot the mark.
It’s also a game of “chicken.” No country (especially the European Union and India) wants to agree to drastic reductions if the biggest polluters – China and the United States – won’t agree to and make plans to meet to the same target. Both countries have been staring across the table, daring each other to blink.
But setting that target, formalizing it in a treaty and the U.S. signing on is a massive first step towards making the changes we, as a country, need to cut our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, as is Congress and President-elect Obama putting a price on CO2 emissions.
At that point, every business in the U.S. that produces CO2 can start to plan and adjust, reduce their share of emissions, and know how much it will cost if they do and if they don’t.
As a result, you, as a consumer, will know how much it will affect the cost of electricity and transportation fuels, and you’ll have decisions whether or not to take steps to reduce your own consumption, whether that means installing new power sources (geothermal, wind or solar) or energy efficiency measures (smart thermostats, weatherizing) in your home, buying more sustainably-produced goods, etc.
3. We can’t do this alone, nor should we.
The U.S. and the rest of the countries at Poznan will have to work together to set targets, share green technology and resources for changing our practices, top to bottom… in short, all parties have to build trust, or every nation will keep polluting, not wanting to subject themselves to “unfair treatment.”
4. The hardest truth: we’re not out to “save the planet”… we’re trying to save ourselves, to maintain the planet’s ability to support us.
At the end of the day, this idea is what’s brought everyone to Poznan. Let’s hope it’s enough to drive every one of these countries to agree, sign their name, and finally get to work in earnest.
EnviroTweets