When my email flooded with news that a climate agreement had been reached in Paris, the urge to celebrate was strong, even as I sifted through news that ranged from the euphoric to the downright cynical. To chalk this up as a victory is tempting, and celebrations are not entirely unwarranted. But we must do it without abandon, tempering our desire for triumph with the bittersweet--or just bitter--realities.
At a 2000-person-strong Jobs, Justice and Climate rally in Boston the day the Paris Agreement was announced, I had already been getting a sense of misgiving over this agreement that had been anticipated with such bated breath. As a woman from the Penobscot tribe railed against the deal's betrayal of indigenous rights, I found myself ruffled, wanting to deny it before I even knew what she was saying was true. I, like so many activists, wanted the Paris Agreement to be good, a major and concrete step towards progress rather than a false victory or yet another stumbling block.
The rally was powerful and inspiring, intersectional and energized. Several people from my school attended, and I felt hopeful that climate change may be an issue that can truly galvanize my peers, who usually register as lukewarm or apathetic.
That hopefulness dimmed later, as I sorted through my email and began to get a sense of what the Paris Agreement had and had not accomplished. The response varied greatly from radicals to moderates, from Big Green groups to grassroots organizations. The most stunning--or appalling--reaction that I saw came from Avaaz, which lauded the deal as if it had been handed down from on high, stamped with God's seal--miracle included! It may make us feel proud and accomplished, but that kind of starry-eyed response is far more dangerous than a measured pros-and-cons limited critique or even a thoroughly disheartening dismissal of the deal as bullshit. The movements, the organizing, the activism, the mass people power, the demonstrations that arose before and during the Paris talks--all of that is heartening and significant to the struggle against corporate extractivism and complicit, indifferent politicians. There are real markers of tipping points building, the fossil fuel era ending, but it's coming from the people, not the corporatocracy and not the Paris talks. To allow us to feel that we have won, omitting a single criticism of the agreement, strips our sense of urgency by letting us believe that the future is safely in the hands of authority and we can all head home now. It allows us to end or put a brake on fierce, all-out activism that is exactly what we need much more, not less, of right now.
And to understand the urgency of the fulcrum at which we are poised, we have to deconstruct the above-and-beyond rosy assessments of the Paris deal like those promoted by Avaaz.
Their statement began, "World leaders at the UN climate talks have just set a landmark goal that can save everything we love!" and went on to call the deal "a brilliant and massive turning point in human history." And how I wish it was.
Perhaps it could "save everything we love," if every country obeyed its voluntary emission-cut pledges and donated enough money to cleanly lift developing countries away from dirty energy. But since it's not enforceable and not very strong, it won't save everything we love. Additionally, this begs the question--who is "we" here? Were the deal obeyed down to the letter and every country did everything required or requested of it, a lot might be saved, but not everything. If "we" is first-world middle-class white people, then probably the deal could prevent a lot of damage and harm from befalling that subset of the world's population. But the agreement would not halt CO2 emissions at a level that would keep many island nations above water, and neither does it provide protections for indigenous, women's, or human rights. Are all of the people who these grievous oversights or omissions will affect excluded from the "we" here?
Not only does this assessment of the Paris Agreement distort the extremely problematic outcome of the COP21 talks, Avaaz has also reframed history to add up to something far more successful and optimistic than the story reality tells. "Out of great crises, humanity has borne beautiful visions," the Avaaz statement declares. "World War II gave rise to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an enduring standard for our spirit and capacity as one people. The fall of Apartheid led South Africa to the single most bold and progressive constitution in the world."
There are a few clear problems here. First, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a powerful and affecting piece of writing, but that's essentially all. It is symbolically significant, but to call it a standard is exactly right. It's an aspiration or an inspiration, but not an enforceable piece of policy. It's also frequently violated, remember?
Second, South Africa's post-apartheid constitution may be impressive, but the cession of power by the white apartheid leaders in 1994 was never complete and the dreams of democracy and equality promoted by the African National Congress (ANC) were subverted from the start. They gained political power with the end of apartheid, but the economic reins remained in the hands of the previous white elites, whose machinations allowed neoliberal policies to continue devastating the country and sabotaging the ANC's efforts to reduce racial inequality and poverty (which actually increased after Nelson Mandela took power).
Both of these glorified pieces of history--the Declaration of Human Rights and the South African constitution--were symbolic and powerful documents that failed to translate to real power and change in a concrete sense. That sounds like an accurate prognosis for the Paris Agreement.
Yes, there were high points and admirable moments during the Paris talks: the High Ambition Coalition, for one, organized by the Marshall Islands and about 100 others, represented a hopeful dynamic of cooperation and demands for equity and justice-based plans to combat the climate crisis. But in the final hours of the talks, large wealthy countries (mostly the Global North) took control to stifle the voices of those representatives.
Avaaz's statement continued, to say that "Everyone expected failure from the climate conference process" and that they kept being told that "people don't care about climate change." Well, we expected failure and we got it, in some absolute sense. There are parts of the deal that are important milestones in changing the discussion around climate change, and the deal produced impressive activism and moving statements from countries most threatened by environmental catastrophe. I don't believe that everything about the Paris talks was a waste. But if we wanted, as Avaaz says, a deal that would "save everything we love," it is a failure.
Furthermore, the reason the agreement might have failed is not because supposedly "people don't care about climate change." Avaaz is right to say that that is untrue. However, what one could have said is, "Governments and corporations don't really care about combating climate change," and that is what caused the failure.
If the victory here is over people who said that no one cares about climate change, then that may be a victory. Though still small-scale compared to the outrage and mobilization we ought to be experiencing, the activism spurred by and concentrated on the Paris talks was indeed remarkable, even in its limited state. That Avaaz has helped in some way to build or connect this movement I don't dispute. But I worry that too much of the movement, such as it is, will be deluded into sitting back and relaxing, now that the story delivered to our inboxes is declaring, essentially, that we have now clinched the battle for the planet, when in truth, there is no reason to stop fighting and many to keep going with even more intensity. It's a starting point to fight all the harder, realizing once and for all that we cannot rely on governments to protect our planet, our health, or our rights. The email from Avaaz itself declares "This gives us the platform we need to realize the dream of a safe future for generations," and regardless of the rosy language, they're right: this is a platform, nothing more. It's something useful that we can build on, whether or not it would amount to anything if left on its own. But we can use it.
The Paris Agreement is a platform from which we must keep screaming, because we are being heard, from time to time and at various volumes, but we must not allow ourselves to be pacified. This deal is a pacifier and eager-to-be-pleased, eager-to-declare-victory Big Green groups are the easily quieted babies.
It's a very shaky platform, however, so if we want the climate movement that we've seen glimpses of to strengthen and spread, we will need to work for that. We have seen the failures of our elected officials and of international negotiations. Change will come, we must know, only from massive demand, obstruction, and grassroots construction. There is no miracle and no deal that will come to save us. We are all we have, and we have a lot, if we use it well.
And we will need to. Not only to insist on enforcement of the few important pieces of the Paris agreement, and not just to keep climate change on the public radar, but because of other threats that keep rising to confound us and imperil the planet. I was gratified to see banners protesting the Trans-Pacific Partnership at the Boston rally, since this is one of the great elephants in the room: none of the paltry victories of the Paris agreement will mean anything if the sort of trade agreements are implemented that guarantee the planet as a corporate playground, an extractivist and anti-democratic bonanza with nothing to stand in its way. The real fight was not in Paris, trusting our futures to the steamrollering power of wealthy first-world nations for whom the bottom line speaks louder than the below-2-degrees-of-warming limit. The real future is against the insidious "free-trade" juggernauts like the TPP, TTIP, and TiSA that promise not just business as usual, but business as worse than usual, and irreversible.
I was explaining the physics and timetable of climate change to some friends today, and one of them commented that if we have fifteen years to get emissions under control, and the Paris agreement asks leaders to meet every five years, they will meet only three times before unstoppable tipping points are triggered under the current projections. This is deadly inertia, masquerading as global action. This is not the pace we need. The "solutions" concocted by world leaders are built for a different reality than the one we live in.
However understandable the impulse to celebrate was, we have to look clearly and rationally at the world that lies before us now. To gloss over the ways in which this deal failed and to make us feel like we have won something truly remarkable--that is toxic. No matter what the outcome of COP21 had been, self-congratulatory-flavored complacency should never, ever have been an option for a post-Paris plan. That this deal is anywhere near perfect or even relieving is a dangerous fallacy, akin to telling a runner who is neck-and-neck with their adversary that they are ahead now and can slow their pace, since they will surely win. Since we aren't nearly that close as far as reining in climate catastrophe goes, we can even more ill afford to slow down. If this is a race against time and against destruction of our planet, we are in an all-out sprint, with a long way to go, a lot of distance to cover, and no promise of a safe or easy ending.
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