What do Greenpeace and the Worldwide Fund for Nature have in common? More than you might think, although Greenpeace is a high-profile, aggressive campaigning organisation funded by individuals with a penchant for spectacle, whilst WWF describes itself as a ‘critical friend’ of business and governments, and has long term partnerships with these folks, funded by, well, these folks.
Participating in their self-reflective analysis of their approach to business and sustainability revealed way more similarities than expected.…
Weeks before COP15 at Copenhagen, ChinaDialogue and OpenDemocracy published versions of my ‘Plan B’ blog, where I argued that national initiatives would form the base currency of climate management for the foreseeable future, and the sooner we got with this new narrative the quicker we could work out how to get it done.
In a nutshell, I argued not just that a decent deal would not be done at Copenhagen, but if my accident one was indeed cut, it might prove to be a distraction that absorbed much energy (the human kind) and money, and most of all time, until its inherent shortfalls became apparent.…
Copenhagen was a structured, sovereign-state based negotiation with clear rules of engagement (albeit abused). It had a beginning, middle and (at least in theory) an end. It was designed to reach agreement on a specific set of activities entirely focused on the public good. It was also a veritable ‘walk through babylon’ (as my video clip painfully illustrated), and as we now all know deteriorated into a shambolic, ego-laden, mecantilist dog-fight.…
Contrary to rumor, money does not make the world go around – but making the maths work does help.
Money, at least on the surface, is the blunting edge of the deal. Estimates vary but there is a convergent focus on total incremental costs rising to about US$100-140 billion per year by 2020. Depending on how one draws the line between here and then, the total bill on this basis that is not going to be paid for by private commercial money might be of the order of US$1 trillion.…
Wednesday, and I am inside the Bella Center after a long chilly wait. One of the team has spent the entire night in the plenary accompanying the (last) attempt to develop a text in a consultative way. The place is now looking like a fortress as the world awaits two hurricane arrivals, over a hundred heads of state, and a riot planned for today.…
