Make climate action cool

“Making climate action cool”

Intervention at UNEP workshop on the

Trade and technology nexus to achieve

Agenda 2030 goals for developing countries

1.     As you may know, the Earth spins on its axis at 1600 kilometers per hour. Its orbital speed around the sun is of 108,000 kilometers per hour. Now, as some of you may know, last July NASA achieved the remarkable goal of putting a spacecraft in Jupiter’s orbit. By the name Juno, it launched from Earth on August 2011. In October 2013, it encountered Earth’s orbit again and used it as a slingshot to gain significant speed on its travel voyage towards Jupiter. Five years and 2.8 billion kilometers later, Juno slowed down to avoid crashing against Jupiter’s gravity forces and enter into orbit, which was achieved successfully. A remarkable fact is that the top speed it reached on this trajectory was 265,000 kilometers per hour, or more than twice the orbital speed of Earth around the sun. Another remarkable fact is that it traveled all this distance and reached this astounding speed using solar energy as predominant source. What NASA has done is commendable indeed: they have made aerospace science and exploration cool. If someone like me can share this story with you is because I was drawn into NASA’s social media outlets and explanations for the non-technical public. Bravo, NASA!

2.     I am from Costa Rica, and it is a country that has a very cool brand. We are a sought-after destination for ecological tourism, we generate 100% of our electricity from renewable sources, our economy has tripled in the last 30 years and in that same period of time our forest coverage has doubled, representing a unique case worldwide in the last 50 years. This can be considered a good example of regenerative development, where growth is both in financial and natural capital simultaneously. We have learned throughout the decades that there is a virtuous spiral between renewable energies, environmental conservation, forest coverage, biodiversity, ecological tourism, services, jobs, and wellbeing. This is a recipe we believe can be considered by countries with similar geographical location and climate, many of which face considerable developmental challenges. May I remind you about the billion people worldwide without access to electricity; the two billion people without access to drinkable water; the three billion people without access to three meals per day; and the four billion people without access to the Internet.

3.     Regarding Sustainable Development Goal 13a., related to the creation of a Green Climate Fund that hopes to raise US$100 billion/year to finance mitigation efforts in developing countries, it is a fact that globally we are spending US$1.5 trillion/year in military equipment. Only a 6% reduction in this expenditure would provide all the cash required by the Fund. Let’s choose our battles wisely!

4.     One of the most important lessons learned from the Paris Agreement is a successful mindset that positively affected the attitudes and behaviors of key participants in the process. This included optimism to always expect a brighter future; imagination to create an innovative agreement; vision to have a broader, more long-term approach; strategic thinking to prioritize actions with key stakeholders; and the ability to design a critical path to take the necessary steps to make it work.

5.     Regarding the Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA) currently under negotiation at the World Trade Organization (WTO), it is an agreement whose aim is partially assisting climate change mitigation and adaptation, partially improving insertion into Global Value Chains (GVC), and also fostering innovation. Costa Rica can share the success story of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) signed in 1996, which allowed the country to attract an important investment like the manufacturing plant of INTEL, which at its peak of production was exporting from Costa Rica 99% of all server microprocessors used worldwide. This created a high-tech cluster that triggered the development of multiple small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that engaged in GVCs through innovation and high competitiveness. INTEL decided in 2014 to transfer its manufacturing plant from Costa Rica to Asia and decided to leave in Costa Rica an innovation lab. This means that Costa Rica has moved, in 20 years, from agricultural production to high-tech manufacturing to high-tech innovation, creating enormous value for the company, its suppliers and the world in general. The most important aspect of this success story is that education has been at the core of it, from school preparedness to the ability to develop public-private partnerships with higher education institutions to adapt to the needs of foreign multinationals, to being able to develop world-class talent to operate at the highest level of performance.

6.     Another important topic related to trade and climate action taking place at the WTO is the leadership of the group of Friends of Fossil Fuels Subsidy Reform which seeks the elimination of these subsidies that, according to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, amount to US$500 billion/year. Furthermore, they have calculated the social cost of these subsidies at US$4 trillion/year. Reducing them would immediately create incentives for renewable energies by proving fossil energy not cost competitive without such subsidies.

7.     Clean technology offers the possibility to address different needs through different solutions. For example, geothermal energy should be prioritized wherever there is an accessible volcano. Solutions should grow organically from there. Is it towards clean tech manufacturing clusters or towards agriculture or towards ecological tourism? It will depend on each case. It is important to consider a different paradigm when thinking about clean tech. For example, an electric car is a great solution to a particular problem of carbon emissions, but better than an electric car is an electric bus that can provide massive, public and clean transportation.

8.     Innovation requires that we identify the constraints within which we must innovate. For example, why do researchers work on the vaccine of a disease they are not suffering? They have the constraints and they look for potential developments that will advance the knowledge and science and technology frontiers organically in a variety of directions depending on the findings and additional constraints incorporated along the way.

9.     Humanity has put a satellite on Jupiter’s orbit powered with renewable energy. We have the challenge to make climate action cool. Millennials know what is cool, not only because they are young and in every generation it is the youth who determine what is cool and what is not, but because millennials are not motivated by money or power or glory, but by purpose. We are not rocket scientists but is this the best we can do to make climate action cool? If we don’t do it, then who? And if we don’t do it now, then when? Thank you. 

Coping with Climate Change: Earth from Jupiter

Introduction.

Imagine standing on the surface of planet Jupiter. How would the Earth look from there? It could be inferred that, in the same way that Jupiter is not visible through the naked eye from Earth, the same would hold true in the opposite direction.

This visualization exercise is useful to put into perspective the dimension of the global conflict otherwise referred to as climate change: it is not perceptible from Jupiter.

Nevertheless, as one approaches planet Earth from outer space, the degree of the problem becomes more and more visible: burning fossil fuels means burning the fossilized remains of living matter that grew with sunlight, decomposed and was compressed over layers of new material decay. The present rate of fossil fuel consumption is equivalent to one million years of ancient sunlight every year. This explains two facts: a) that fossil fuels will eventually be exhausted permanently from the planet; and b) that the exhaust fumes from such burning process accumulate in the atmosphere, as they have nowhere else to go outside of the physical constraints of the planet’s environment. This causes the well-known greenhouse effect, increasing the temperature of at least the Earth’s land and water.

The last four million years, the planet’s long-term average temperature had remained stable, after hundreds of millions of years of instability. Naturally, the geological process of tectonic and volcanic turmoil created the required conditions for life to evolve into more complex species and into an incredibly wide variety and diversity of them.

In only two hundred years, human industrious activity spawned sufficient carbon dioxide to alter such stability, bringing climatic uncertainty to a habitat that had become quite predictable to human understanding.

Excess evaporation and the melting of ice formations have additionally triggered a disruption in the planet’s water cycle, from cloud formation to sea levels, and from potable water to floods.

The wrong question.

I am fundamentally at odds with the case study and subsequent questions for this Module. Although there may or may not be subtle ecosystemic differences between the vulnerability of the Sundarbans region in India and Bangladesh, another fact holds true: c) as climate change consequences progress in visibility, the alteration of living conditions –not only for humans- in an already vulnerable geographical area will become more evident.

Living in Australia I had the opportunity to visit several natural sites where there is physical evidence of sea levels way above present levels. Such water surges are not as old as climate instability, but the result of climate oscillations that provoked melting of ice formations, altering sea levels significantly. Subsequent ice ages re-captured water in the form of glaciers and polar ice caps, making sea levels recede worldwide.

This allows me to understand two additional facts: d) whether there is anthropogenic climate change or not, sea levels will rise again, perhaps not as the result of human activity and not in such a short period of time in geological terms; and e) relocation of human settlements will be forced by sea levels in this century or a few centuries later regardless of what mitigation efforts humanity embarks on.

Although I could make an effort to substantiate a statement in either direction in response to Assignment Question 1, I prefer to consider the worst-case scenarios projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the Stern Report, other geological data about ice ages and higher sea levels in previous millennia, and take action counterfactually from there. In other words, if there will be a one-meter sea level rise by the end of the century, what kind of adaptation should we engage in? If prior to the next ice age sea levels will rise 60 meters, where would be the safest places to establish human settlements?

The right question.

Our scientific reasoning is based on methodologies that embrace deduction and induction as principles to advance new knowledge. A principle that has been neglected is abductive reasoning, paradoxically being the source of the initial hunch that leads to all scientific research. As Einstein reminds us, “imagination is more important than intelligence.”

The way abductive reasoning could help us cope with climate change is by allowing us to collaborate creatively in the process of imagining a new model for thriving life -also human- on the planet given the global constraints that we already know and even considering a few that, although there is no certainty about, there is some likelihood of. For example, the constraints by 2050 if human population reaches 9 billion, greenhouse gas emissions continue a steady rise, and the planet’s biocapacity –forest coverage, land fertility and ocean resilience- continues a steady decrease.

It is paramount that humanity imagines those scenarios –regardless of the likelihood of them happening- so that we can start generating ideas and building solutions for that not-so-distant future.

One last fact I would like to propose: f) I will not be alive in 2100. But that is not necessarily the same expectation for my unborn children, who might, and my grandchildren, who most likely will be around at the coming turn of the century. This leads me to believe that the efforts that we are doing and should continue doing to save the planet from humankind are not to improve the world we will live in, but the world our grandchildren will. This is why I strongly support the promotion of intercultural ethics as the way forward to reach global agreements towards the build-up of critical masses of leaders who will bring about a sustainable change that can ensure the regeneration and preservation of natural habitats as rich and unique as the Sundarbans.