What will it take to stop climate change? — Part 2: A framework for global action
This article is a continuation of Part 1: What is preventing action?
To have a complete understanding of the assumptions that were made in this part, we suggest you to read the previous one before proceeding.
When it comes to the fundamental requirements for global action on climate change, we already have them all — we are just failing to exploit them correctly.
- We have the technology and solutions, but we are not deploying them fast enough and at the scale required;
- We have the money, but we are spending most of it in the opposite direction;
- We have the will to act, but we are lacking a global plan, a strategy to realise impactful solutions and someone to coordinate them.
But before moving forward, let’s discuss who is responsible for taking action.
Responsibility: Sectors
The responsibility does not completely fall on either the companies, the investors or the governments — responsibility is shared almost equally among them, and each has a well-defined role to play in this.
So far, the people and global institutions have been asking them to assume their own responsibilities (respectively through public demands and global policies that incentivise action), but they were only partially successful. Instead, you could say that these tree main actors have been trying to shift it on the two other parties.
We will never reach a solution until governments, companies and investors start to collaborate, and until they clearly know where they should focus their efforts on.
Responsibility: Countries
Global action is by definition a coordinated effort distributed across the world, and as such requires a global plan. While everyone shares a common goal, the strategy of each Country would necessarily differ — due for example to different land characteristics or access to renewable energy sources, as well as their own internal commercial and political landscape.
At the same time, not all Countries are contributing to emissions at the same degree and so not everyone bears the same responsibility.
Every Country should take action with respect to their capability and responsibility. That is why coordination at a global and national scale is fundamental, and why they should not be considered separately.
We are still missing something
Now, for the sake of this discussion, let’s assume that moral responsibility and common sense will gradually induce most Countries to put aside their differences and competitive behaviours, while agreeing that they need to collaborate in order to achieve global action against climate change. (My personal belief is that this is actually not far from the current global situation, where everyone acknowledges the need of doing something, but no one really knows what to do.)
At that point, a different set of questions suddenly appears:
How do we do that? Global institutions provided some guidelines, but how can we practically achieve a global transition to renewable energies, and who is going to coordinate it? How can we establish a mutual collaboration with governments, companies and investors all over the world, when there is a general lack of trust and agreement between them? And what exactly everyone should be doing, in the context of global action?
I think what our society is missing is a framework for action, that no current government, company or global institution is able to represent in its entirety or put into motion, and which constitutes the “practical reason” of our inaction.
A framework for action
Based on everything that was written in this article, to achieve global action we need an initiative able to:
- Unite everyone over a single, common goal: the people, the scientific community, governments, global institutions, investors and companies;
- Represent everyone, while being apolitical and independent;
- Identify the most effective technical solutions at an international and national level, by working together with the worldwide scientific community;
- Devise a plan to deploy said solutions at the speed and scale required, by working together with governments and companies;
- Coordinate action, allowing everyone to move quickly while focusing their efforts on a set of specific, impactful solutions.
Such initiative should work specifically with:
- Governments — to support them in the formulation of effective policies, as well as assisting in the realisation of urban and nationwide climate projects;
- Investors — to allow them to massively invest in the technologies that will constitute our future society, while saving the world at the same time;
- Companies — to assist in the transition of established large companies to clean technologies with the employment of effective environmental strategies, while facilitating the rise of new sustainable and innovative companies.
Finally, in order for such an initiative to be truly effective at a global scale, I believe it should not originate from any government or institution, but should directly start from the people as a way to turn their words into action. When not even global institutions are able to stimulate action, it is the people that have to play the most important role: holding companies and governments accountable for their actions.
So what should we do?
As I said, I don’t think any existing initiative or organisation is currently able to accomplish this (otherwise we wouldn’t find ourselves in this situation).
Furthermore, even if tomorrow the investment sector decides to completely and immediately divest from fossil fuels, companies start their transformation and governments start implementing strict policies, we would still be lacking global coordination — the pathway to maximise the speed and efficiency of our action, which is absolutely critical to meet the 1.5°C or 2°C targets.
That doesn’t mean we can’t come up with a solution in time.
But before discussing what that solution could be, allow me to spend a few words about me and the reason I wrote this article.
I’m a young engineer and entrepreneur who has been deeply troubled by the inaction surrounding climate change, and who shares the ideals of the youth climate movement. I’m not a climate scientist myself, but I understand the science behind it and how dangerous it is to ignore it. As an engineer and entrepreneur I clearly see how technically straightforward solutions are, but at the same time how the complexity of human society is hindering their realisation. I’m not an executive of a large company, but I’m aware of how businesses and the investment sector operate.
As someone who stands between all of them, in this article I tried to express the various points of view with the aim to clarify the whole situation to those who may not be familiar with all of them.
But I would also like to stress out that today nobody is able to truly represent all these parties at the same time, and therefore facilitate a collaboration between them. No one has found a way to align everyone’s interests. This is why agreements could not be reached, and the real cause of our inaction.
As the recent COP25 demonstrated once again our total failure in finding a solution, I decided to do something, you could say out of desperation for our future. I canceled my plans to study as much as physically possible, get a comprehensive understanding on the global situation and come up with what I see as the most logical solution.
This is what I came up with.
The Restore Project
It’s called The Restore Project, and it is an apolitical and independent initiative that aims to stand between governments, companies and the people. It is built on everything that is written in this article, and its sole objective is to provide a set of practical solutions to cut carbon emissions at a global scale, by involving everyone in their implementation.
Its main characteristics are:
- A global plan divided into multiple projects, each targeting a specific area of intervention (renewables, automotive, agriculture, etc.);
- Establish a process to actually realise solutions, by involving companies and investors in their realisation;
- Strategy and operations with both a global and a national scope.
I won’t get further into this because it is not the topic of this article, but if you even partially agree with my reasoning I hope you will decide to check it out, and possibly support us (on Twitter) or join us.
I am well aware the whole plan still needs to be fully developed and refined. But even though it may not work out after all, I don’t see any leading organisation or initiative approaching things this way, so I thought it was at least better than doing nothing.
This is the framework for action I came up with. It could represent what we’re missing to really start taking action against climate change, or the starting point for something different.
In any case, we need to do something and we need to do it now.
Thank you so much for reading this article. I’d love to know what you think of it, so I hope to hear from you in the comments or on Twitter!
