COP 27 – The Huge Opportunity Behind Keeping Humanity Under 1.5 C

COP 27 – The Huge Opportunity Behind Keeping Humanity Under 1.5 C –?Shape the World of the Future by Setting the Policies, Projects, Growth Model & Institutions for a Bright Sustainable Future. That is the Massive Opportunity behind this Huge Challenge.

With Humanity Under “CODE RED”?according to the 6th UN IPPCE Report, The Economist last cover stating what most of us knew but not all want to see, that indeed current climate policies are falling well below the 1.5 Degree Celsius target; and with our courageous UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez addressing COP27 delegates / governments with the clear warning that we can choose between “Collective Action” or “Collective Suicide”. The time is now, and the choice is clear. Can we still do it?

Absolutely YES, BUT not by using the same policies, instruments, incentives & forums, not to mention the same people, stakeholders, and approach.

This is not the time anymore for blaming, regretting or alarming, neither for panicking, it is time for reflection and smart, concerted, and BOLD attainable & feasible actions to make the 1.5 Degree Celsius Target attainable or at least getting as close as possible.

It is still attainable??We should, and we can make it attainable.

Climate Change is a societal, political, economic & technological issues; more important and above all it is an intergenerational humanitarian crisis. As such, we are poised to imagine a better way to achieve our common goals, but before doing that lets me also acknowledge and reflect where we are as a society.

If we look where we are as a society and the current climate crisis, we might easily agree to recognize some of the following reflections but perhaps not all of them:

1)Truly historical times.?We are living truly historical times as we?trying to get out from once in a century pandemic and perhaps the largest economic recession of this century (IMF called "The Great Lockdown") now we are confronted with a global energy crisis but even more important a once in 10,000 years climate and biodiversity crisis. Furthermore, we are in the early days of what the World Economic Forum called as the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Digital Revolution, and I prefer to call the "Sustainable, Digital & Social Revolution".?

If you feel overwhelmed, you are certainly entitled to it; hopefully you will also become equally excited about the historical opportunity behind these challenges and the new wave of massive innovations and transformation ahead of us.

In this context and according to the 6th IPPC Report we should cut our global CO2 emissions by 70% ASAP, from the current level of around 35 Billion Tons of CO2 annually?in order to keep our total emissions until 2050 within the 1.5 C carbon budget of 300-400 Billion tons by 2050 and before we are becoming Carbon Neutral by 2050. More recently the last Emissions Gap Report 2022, point that under current trajectory we are pointing towards a1 2.8 Celsius increase in temperature by the of the century.

?2)?New Policies Will Keep Failing Under Current International Architecture & Growth Model.?Despite the clear short-term challenges, the current crisis, bring a unique opportunity to define the set of projects, policies, organization, incentives, and frameworks to make our societies thrilled during the next decades and centuries. Current world order and organizations are the result of the WWII and the Breton Woods agreements; therefore these might be obsolete or inefficient to tackle this century’s challenges especially as we tackle the first two battles – the war on Climate & Inequality or what I prefer to call, the rebalancing of "Humans with Nature" and “Humans with Humans”.

3)?Historical growth and business opportunity –?despite of the complexity of the issues and the size of the task, it is important to recognize that this transformation is poised to become the single largest opportunity for this century. This could be easily calculated in multiples of the current global GDP and therefore hundreds of trillions of dollars just by looking on the value of cutting projected CO2 emissions from the BAU scenarios versus our Net Zero Goal by 2050. Indeed in 2013, I estimated that under a potential global carbon price of just 30USD/MT this gap would equal around to around USD180T in 2050.

This opportunity not only enables firms, industries, and nations to growth at much higher multiples of GDP, they can even decouple from traditional growth while enjoying very large multiples over GDP. Indeed, the firms, industries and nations leading it will become the winners of the future, while the rest simply disappear.

Let me please simplify all the above in a very simple example.?The doctors of our planet have told us we have a potential terminal illness, like a heart attack, stroke or similar. So, what do we do after reflecting and accepting the first shock? We listen to our doctor, and we act. How fast do we act? As soon as possible, no? So, if we are asked to stop smoking, how much do we quit? By 50% by next month, or 75% this week or immediately???

Our world is poised to face three interrelated “battles” or figuratively the real "wars" of this century. Rebalancing them would be a massive task but also a huge opportunity not to be missed to create a new sustainable, equitable and healthy planet for all.

Major Interconnected Battles of this Century, imply the imperative need to reconcile:

1)?????Humans with Nature?- (Planetary Boundaries).

2)?????Humas with Humans?- (Income Inequality, Inclusion & Diversity)

3)?????Humans with Machine?- (Singularity, AI, Robots, etc)

In this context what set of new policies, frameworks, incentives and models of growth should the COP27 embrace to make of this crisis a huge opportunity to shape a Sustainable Growth Model & Future? This should be accompanied with a clear list of short-term actions to cut emissions by 70% as soon as possible:

Potential Recommendations to COP27

1)?Task a 21st Century "Manhattan Project” or better called as “Code Green Project” solely devoted to move Humanity back from Code Red into Code Green; and where a multidisciplinary team of Scientists, and the best minds in the world, design the feasible technological pathways, industrial roadmaps and transformative frameworks, including the right set of incentives needed to cut our global CO2 emissions by as much as 70% ASAP and in accordance with the suggested UN IPPC carbon budget of 300 - 400 Gigatons of C02 until 2050 while becoming Net Zero By 2050. These incentives should include a global high carbon price or alternatively in large carbon clubs as a starting point.

2)?New GDP formula to capture Environmental Externalities / Planetary Boundaries.?Gross Domestic Product, hereafter GDP is the most used measure of economic activity. The first basic concept of GDP was invented at the end of the 18th century. The modern concept was developed by the US economist?Simon Kuznets?in 1934 and adopted as the main measure of a country's economy at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. GDP?measures the monetary value of final goods & services—that is, those that are consumed by the final user—produced in a country in a given period?(say a quarter or a year). It counts all the output generated within the borders of a country.

Unfortunately, this GDP formula and economic activity measurement not only focus on the monetary value of goods bought,?but it also wrongly assumed that planetary boundaries / resources as infinite, when they are not. Therefore, is becoming critical to add environmental externalities and the consumption and replenishment of planetary boundaries into the growth model. This should help to create the right set of incentives to deliver clean growth and accelerate the so needed energy and growth transition.

Indeed, under this enhanced formula?we might realize that our global economy might be de-growing for decades?(just by factoring CO2 emissions)?and despite our current belief.?This simple change in the way measure growth, and our capacity to price and internalize negative & positive environmental externalities is critical to avoid current COP and future COPs failure. Indeed, without the right set of incentives including a global carbon price and a new growth formula as a starting point, we will not be able to move as fast as needed and COPs will keep failing to deliver.

3)?Empowering Citizens & Society to Act by Simple Education (Demand Side)?For decades governments have devoted most of their efforts to tackle the supply side, while citizens and the power of their actions and demand not only have been less regarded; it has been neglected by using complex languages and acronyms for normal citizens willing to act but unable to do so. It is therefore critical to ground the debate from the scientific community and politicians to making climate change crisis, understandable and actionable to citizens.

Making clear the fragility of our atmosphere and the bases of climate change with simple and comprehensive examples for all. Something like if we will imagine the total size of our atmosphere as a simple glass of water where we keep putting water, on in this case CO2 or smoke. And we will imagine a small creature leaving there, while we keep adding water, smoke or CO2 we will immediately realize about the impact of how our own individual actions in the past, today and in the future keep adding to the crisis, will accelerate the awareness and solution. Indeed, in the last 40 years and since 1980 we have released 45% of our total global stock CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.

The reality is that under the 2C Scenario of the Paris agreement, we all, citizens of the world, we live with 4,000 grams of CO2 per Capita and Day; and where driving a regular internal combustion engine creates between 100 to 200 grams per kilometer. In other words, driving our car around 20 to 30 kilometers might deplete our budget for the day. The big question is the following: would higher awareness, measurement & education on the impact of our actions serve to reduce our emissions? Absolutely.

Finally in a recent, courageous & excellent speech from President Macron, he talked about the?“End Of Abundance”?and while I agree on the underlying warning and importance to raise awareness, under the need for a new growth model, I will argue we are not facing the?“End Of Abundance” but the “End Of Waste”;?as most of the things we currently have we might not actually need under this new sustainable growth model.

4) Empowering Current & New Institutions,?including COP. Current international architecture was created in the aftermath of the WWII under the Breton Woods Agreements. Current challenges might require us to upgrade our international order, including the purpose of effectiveness of COP and future COPs. Specially as we move from the negotiation and awareness phase to a “collective action” phase, where our key stakeholders should leverage and implement diligently the guidance of the “Green Code Project” in the most practical and effective manner at the regional, national and cross-national level. After all we are all in the same boat.

?5) Climate Justice & Income Inequality –?finally it is also imperative to recognize that even if we are able successfully tackle the first of the three mentioned battles of this century,?meaning how to?reconcile humans with Nature, it is equally imperative to reconcile Humans with Humans, tackle income and climate inequality. This alone could trigger another article, but please see some remote ideas, that combine all of the above and prove we can always find new avenues and we should explore them in this historical crisis opportunity

In very simple terms, current economic growth model, GDP formula and international organizations has failed to capture the impact of environmental externalities in growth but also to redistribute global growth equally at national and international level.

6) The Digital Revolution Should Be Embraced & Put at the Service of Our Planet & Society,?not vice-versa.?Singularity and all kind of exponential technologies (from Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, Autonomous Cars, Blockchain, Robotics, 3D/4D Printers, Nano Technology or Synthetic Biology, etc.) has the potential to literally disrupt for good complete industries, economies and societies. Indeed, these technologies could help us to cut billions of CO2 emissions globally while helping us to address all battels of this century.?As the emergency crisis unfold and these technologies reach technological maturity, they should be pursued at large scale, to accelerate our sustainable transformation.

In this sense it is also imperative to set sustainability principles at the core purpose of these digital technologies, while this form of COP or future ones or the “Code Green Project” should embrace, monitor and be ready to deploy at large scale these technologies when ready; being fully aware of their disruptive nature, and capacity to cut emissions at large scale if well deployed. In short, is critical to understand for global regulators, that in this fast transformation we want to be sure we don’t regulate the past but the future, and current regulations leave still room for future exponential technologies to disrupt for good society.

Let me just conclude with some final remarks and acknowledgements.

Covid-19 has reminded us of some critical lessons on things that we use to give for granted:

·?????? Nature is much more powerful than humans

·??????Our current growth model & relationship with nature is not sustainable

Indeed, as we withdrew from the planet, with humanity facing multiple lockdowns, we saw nature coming back. From butterflies to whales, nature was blossoming again.?That is why it is critical to rebalance the relationship between Humans and Nature;?utilizing this unique and historical climate crisis and opportunity to put the bases for a sustainable growth model and future for humanity in planet earth. The time is NOW.

Finally, Planet Resources & Boundaries are “Finite”; Human Imagination is “Infinite”. That is why still confident we can achieve this ambitious goal, by upgrading our current frameworks, set of incentives and growth model, embracing digital technologies and the opportunity ahead of us, while we should become relentless and laser focus on solving this climate emergency.

This is not the time for blaming, regretting, or panicking; indeed, this is the time for massive “collaboration and collective action”, “imagining better” a laser focus and BOLD implantation of feasible, realistic technologies in record times....

Moving Humanity back from “Code Red” to “Code Green” is a MUST, addressing all the three battles of these century, while shaping the basis for a sustainable growth and the clean society of the future is not only the single largest growth opportunity of this century; it is a historical opportunity to shape our own future,...

We can and should do it...

Rafael

Bibliography & Related Literature

1. IPCC report: ‘Code red’ for human driven global heating, warns UN chief | | 1UN News
2. The world is missing its lofty climate targets. Time for some realism | The Economist
3. Emissions Gap Report 2022 (unep.org)
4. 4th Industrial Revolution | Dow Corporate
5. Amazon.com: The Future of the Chemical Industry by 2050: 9783527332571: Cayuela Valencia, Rafael: Books
6. The Atmosphere: Earth's Security Blanket – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov)
7. Macron warns of ‘end of abundance’ as France faces difficult winter | France | The Guardian
8. Earth Day 2018 - How Blockchain Could Solve Climate Change And Income Inequality | LinkedIn