The Party is Over

Cancun-messy (a play on the name of the Cancunmesse conference center where the official side events where held), and Climate chaos were some of the colorful phrases used to describe the COP 16. The talks have ended, delegates and dignitaries have returned to their homelands, Canún left messy, what is there to show for it?

At the end of the opening statement for the COP16, IPCC chairman Dr. Rajendra Pachauri hoped, " We hope Cancun signifies a major step in action to deal with the challenge of climate change. The available scientific knowledge in this field justifies it and the global community rightly expects it."

What do we have to walk away with from this?

The UN aimed low and got what it wanted, a non-binding, non-specific, "Cancun Agreement". The UN process is admittedly slow and not designed for sweeping changes, and because of this, several are heralding the Agreement as a success and proof that multilateralism is still relevant. The Agreement touches on a few aspects of climate change mitigation, but looks away from any real language of how these would work:

Green Climate Fund - a mechanism of transferring money from rich nations to developing ones. This would be to finance alternative energy, or other clean development mechanisms (as in the Kyoto Protocol)

REDD+ a UN program designed to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation by reducing the rate of deforestation. Industries or countries would use REDD+ payments as offsets to allow them to continue to emit greenhouse gases with the knowledge that forests elsewhere would suck up that carbon. HIGHLY contentious.

Science-based Emission Cuts - this is the big one. All countries acknowledged the need for science based targets, however the emissions reductions as determined by scientists would require that the world reduce emissions up to 40% by 2020 in order to prevent mean global temperature rise over 2 degrees celsius.

That's the rub. Kyoto, the world's first platform for making reductions in greenhouse gases, was ratified in 1997 and since then - 13 years later - we still don't have a multilateral agreement for making real reductions in GHG emissions. With Cancún touted as a "success", without any tangible outcome, it is merely a "stepping stone", putting off action until maybe 2013 in Durban, South Africa (where COP 17 will be). If essentially nothing has been done over the past 13 years, how can we expect to make science-based reductions in 10? Especially if, according to the IPCC, emissions should be peaking by 2015.

Cancún, was a success - according to its own measures, but at the cost taking action. Though the Cancún Agreement was ratified by consensus (in contrast to Copenhagen's political elitism), Bolivia claimed that the Agreement would allow global temperatures to rise 4 degrees celsius (this increase in global temperature would result in 40 - 70% species extinction), and showed the UN's preference for commercial solutions over humanitarian focused listening and action. Large corporate players including Walmart and the World Bank, were invited to high-level talks and played integral roles in developing markets not only for carbon, but also biodiversity. Contrast this to the systematic silencing of youth and indigenous groups by the UN as well as federal police. Indigenous delegates were denied previously-granted access to negotiation spaces and youth activists were evicted from the regal Moon Palace - home of the negotiation space.

These two important, yet systematically marginalized groups need to be given more clout and a stronger voice in future negotiations if we're to pave the way for a truly sustainable society. \

Beyond social equity issues, two major questions are left from Cancún: 1) Where will the promised $100 Billion come from for the Climate Green Fund? and 2) What will be the real emission reduction targets and strategies?

These issues will hopefully be addressed at COP-17 in Durban, South Africa.

With that, I'd like to close this chapter of climate investigation with two quotes from the IPCC AR4 Synthesis Report,

"Unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt. Reliance on adaptation alone could eventually lead to a mag- nitude of climate change to which effective adaptation is not pos- sible, or will only be available at very high social, environmental and economic costs."

and more important to keep in mind come elections, local energy and ag decisions, or global catastrophes from resource mining and energy procurement,

" Delayed emission reductions significantly constrain the opportunities to achieve lower stabilisation levels and increase the risk of more severe climate change impacts."

Chilling. Inspiring.

Thank you once again to Cornell for being concerned with climate change and wanting to be part of the solution, as well as giving so many students the opportunity to take part and experience this.

Klimaforum: Bio-intensive, Animal-integrated, Perennial-based, Organic Regional Food Systems as the Climate's Saving Grace

Quite a lofty title, but that's the main message given by Ronnie Cummins - founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association as well as coordinator of Via Organica, which is an organic farmers association in the states of northern Mexico.

In short Ronnie harped on "organic agriculture" as the only real way forward. Not only as a means of adapting to a weirder climate, but also as a means of mitigating climate change - sequestering excess green house gases and reducing their emissions from foodscapes.

Now, I'm "educated" (educated, meaning schooled) in agriculture, I know and believe that organic (at least the way its described in North America) has many flaws and in certain applications, like monoculture Earthbound brand lettuce, organic isn't any better than "conventional" agriculture. I pressed Ronnie on this issue, that some organic uses excessive tillage for weed control, spray and pray mentality with organic analogues, and extensive land ares under monoculture. He agreed and further qualified his vision of organic to be bio-intensive (meaning growing more food in smaller land areas), based in perennial plants, free of tillage (to preserve soil structure, function, and capacity to store carbon), necessarily incorporating animals, and ultimately being designed in the likes of the natural ecosystems that the farm is part of. This sounds a lot like conversations I hear in the permaculture and sustainable agriculture circles here in Ithaca. I felt lucky to have been immersing myself in the food revolution that is happening in the Finger Lakes (in Ronnie's words), where there so much activity to build a local food and fiber system. But there are still unanswered questions about food security and sovereignty, food production capacity, and local and national political agendas to ensure the success of agriculture in a new climate.

Ronnie identified a number of current issues, or problems, including the need for better Life- Cycle Analyses in the calculation of the proportion of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from agriculture. Some provocative new measurements that need to be included are GHG emissions from land clearing for industrial scale biofuels. Another new metric to include is the energy that goes into cooking and processing foods for industrial food systems, and methane generated from improper disposal (i.e. not composting organic matter) of organic food "waste". Ronnie argues that once these calculations are included industrial monoculture based agriculture will be shown for its true nature: a climate criminal. He contends that under the new calculations agriculture will be shown to contribute to 50% of global GHG emissions, compared to the 10-12% that the IPCC AR4 came up with. If you check out the outline for the upcoming AR5 (Assessment Report 5), which is slated to come out in 2014 issues such as food security and other socio-economic issues will be covered.

In addition to addressing issues of GHG contributions of ag, he also pointed out the very important and frustrating issue that agriculture hasn't really been invited to the negotiating tables, despite our role not only in contributing to anthropogenic GHG emissions, but our role as part of the solution too.

Hear Ronnie speak about this (I apologize for the wind noise, I left the windscreen in Ithaca):

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In addition to GHG emissions, Ronnie stresses the importance of consumer participation in the food revolution, but not without the help of labeling and regulations associations. Ronnie says that current labels such as "All Natural" are deceiving and make foods that are climate adversaries seem OK and healthy choices. A favorite rant of mine that Ronnie goes on is one about vegtarianism and veganism. As a former vegetarian of 40 years, Ronnie couldn't see how ranchers on the one hand loved their animals and on the other sent them off for sluaghter. However, in his new vision for agriculture Ronnie sees the integral function of animals - how even nature doesn't farm with animals. Even further, vegetarian and vegan soy and corn based products are climate offenders due to massive deforestation for soy plantations (as well as unsustainable beef cattle pastures). Click here for a great article enumerating the many causes and trends of Amazonian deforestation, or listen to Ronnie:

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What I really appreciated about Ronnie's was his call for abandoning "doom and gloom" perspectives. He really sees this bio-intensive, animal-integrated, perennial-based agriculture as the predominant way to reduce GHG emissions as well a sequester excess CO2.

However, Ronnie self-admitantly is not a scientist, though he does believe in using science to guide action. Though some of his number claims may be spurious, I think that his conceptual ideas are right on target. He cites methods such as carbon sequestration in the soil as the major contribution to climate change mitigation and while he is discouraged by the political and economic follies that have emerged around carbon credits and markets, he sees the value in paying farmers for "a better way to farm". I agree, we should be offering incentives for growers to be maximizing ecosystem benefits, the atmosphere included. Currently, we offer incentives for growing fertilizer loving (but inefficient user) crops like corn and soy, and value only one thing: yield. This incentive structure encourages land clearing for crops, poor management and stewardship of the land, export commodity economic agendas, corn and soy byproducts ubiquitously found in our processed foods, and a devaluation of food that people can eat. Another important point that Ronnie makes is the need for scientists, activist scientists (like the world famous climatologist James Hansen ), citizens, and farmers to come together "under the same tent" to enable more action the positive transition agriculture needs if it is to part of the solution.

Ronnie, sums up with two important sentiments. One is that climate change is not just about the atmosphere, or carbon dioxide. Its about the whole earth, its about changing our economic and political systems and our scientific priorities. He mentions a climate conference in Bolivia, (there are many UN COP like conferences that lead up to the main COP. They are more focused and held in different countries throughout the year in order to prepare for the main negotiations), where the rights of Mother Earth were spelled out into an official document. His second important sentiment is that of a fierce, but uplifting and radical message. "We have 1800 days" Ronnie states, referring to that some scientists are saying that we have 6 years (though his calculation come out to just under 5) left to make our carbon emissions negative, other wise we're cooked. While that itself isn't very uplifting and quite ominous he argues that we are fighting for a new food system that is rejuvenation, rejuvenation of the atmosphere, soil, and ecology - including the socio-politico-economic ecology of humans:

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