Post Carbon Institute: La Grande Négociation
La Grande Négociation: while we bargain, our ultimate fate comes down to acceptance
Its only day 3 of the meetings, but Ive already come to one conclusion:
As a society, were still stuck in the bargaining phase of Kübler-Rosss Stages of Grief.
Yes, theres actual bargaining taking place between climate negotiators at COP21. But Im talking about a larger, more systemic bargaining thats occurring: Our attempts to respond to the existential threat of climate change while holding desperately to our extractive, growth-and-consumption-based way of life. But as PCI Fellow Bill McKibben likes to say, Physics and chemistry dont bargain.
Its not only world leaders who are trying to mitigate the climate crisis while maintaining business as usual. Too many environmentalists are engaged in their own version of bargainingplacing their faith in the assertion that
all our energy needs can be met affordably from wind, solar, and water technologies by 2050. Now, I would agree with this claim if we thought long and hard about what we mean by the word needs. But the (sometimes spoken but more often unspoken) expectation is that we wont need to significantly change how we live.
The rationale, of course, is that our way of life is currently non-negotiable and so we must operate within the political realities of the day if were to have any hope of making some kind of climate progress. And thats true to a point. In fact, its precisely whats led to the kind of agreement were likely to get out of Parisincremental, insufficient, with lots of prayers and promises that technology will save the day.
Ultimately, we have no choice but to move from the bargaining stage of grief to that of acceptance. The choice we do have is what grief well have to accept the end of the American-style way of life or the end of humanity altogether.