3 June 2024
To end the climate crisis, it’s useful to understand what’s been tried so far and failed. Over nearly three decades, there have been 28 COPs to try to do something about global warming. The delegates pledged to enact legislation which would reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions sufficiently to keep temperature rises below a certain ceiling.
This strategy has failed badly. Each country was left to its own devices to craft legislation which would keep temperatures down. Each tried to negotiate new legislation with the companies responsible for causing the problem.
This is the way business is typically regulated. Public interest activists sit down with industry lobbyists and try to agree to a compromise. Legislatures and administrative agencies mediate the process and then reflect the deal at which all arrive in new rules and regulations.
When it has lots of money at stake, industry has become proficient at delaying and frustrating the process. This allows it to continue inflicting severe damage on the environment [and other elements of the public interest] simply because the process can’t find a way to make it stop.
A new way to deal with GHG emissions will be the subject of my next several posts. I will welcome your thoughts.
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