IEA Says 5 Years Left Before We "Lock In" Perilous Climate Change

Vancouver Sun, AFP, Nov 9, 2011, excerpts:

"PARIS - The world has just five years to avoid being trapped in a scenario of perilous climate change and extreme weather events, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned on Wednesday .

On current trends, "rising fossil energy use will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change," the IEA concluded in its annual World Energy Outlook report.

To meet energy needs while still averting climate catastrophe, governments must engineer a shift away from carbon-intensive fossil fuels, the agency said bluntly.

Business-as-usual emissions would put the world "on an even more dangerous track toward an increase of 6.0 C (10.8 F)," the report says.

Scientists who have modelled the impacts on biodiversity, agriculture and human settlement say a 6 C world would be close to unlivable due to violent extremes of drought, flooding, heatwaves and storms.

"One wonders how many more worrying figures the world needs," commented Connie Hedegaard, the European Union's climate commissioner.

The report "shows that the world is heading for a fossil-fuel lock-in. This is another urgent call to move to a low-carbon economy," she said in a statement.

Setting a global price on carbon, slashing fossil fuel subsidies, boosting renewable energy and energy efficiency and revised tax codes are all tools for achieving that end, she added."

Subsequent Comment  

Could you provide tactical suggestions on how to implement in a context sensitive solution when my senior leadership (department director, city manager and some council members) does not accept climate change as fact?

Response

Your tactical options are limited in such a situation, as you know. As I mention above, I highly recommend Lovins book/program proposal, Reinventing Fire because his proposal faces the same position you face and he has many good arguments and ways of addressing those positions. The bottom line for him, is that shifting off fossil fuel completely, and ASAP, is the best move a business can make for survival, profit, risk, and strategic reasons, which he demonstrates. Why would the case be any different for a community?

A key tactical move, assuming they are open to issues more generally, would be to switch topics to energy risks and security issues. Fossil fuel purchases fund terrorism that ultimately hurts Americans. Even without global warming, the US economy is at risk from prices increases as the recession recedes, the economy expands,  and the decreasing supply effects of peak-oil come into play increasingly. Conducting a sensitivity analysis of the general fund and your community’s welfare to oil price increases might be instructive.

Ultimately, the situation you face requires the capacity to orchestrate powerful dialogue and inquiry because of the self-reinforcing nature of positions people often hold. The field of organizational learning contains the concepts and tools to address the situation. Peter Senge is one of the world’s leading theorists and practitioners. In The Necessary Revolution, he presents one case similar to your situation and shows how the conversation typically goes and how it could go differently using the principles, concepts, and skills of organizational learning. I have scanned the case here. The International Society for Organizational Learning’s website for training resources (here, here, and here) may be useful, along with local reps from the international network of professionals.

Another powerful public process, America Speaks 21^st Century Town Hall meetings, was developed by Carol Lukensmeyer, and may be useful. Let me know if you find these useful, have further questions, or find other tactics that may be useful to all of us. I prepared a longer response here.