Today is a good day for the world famous so-called “Serenity Prayer.” It is part of the twelve-step “liturgy”—helpful when confronting addiction. Since many of us confess we are addicted to fossil fuels and will use some to go to work today or to cook our food today or to warm our homes today, it is a good day to pray. Like that drink you can’t stop drinking, we are stuck in an addictive pattern. We are morally compromised, to put it mildly.
Yesterday it looked like 1.5° C (about 3°F) was going to be the direction for COP21’s final objective (“1.5 and stay alive,” goes the slogan) or at the very least “less than 2°” was nigh as a consensus goal. It also looked like utter chaos at the level of implementation: when might we dedicate ourselves to reach that objective? No agreement there at all.
I was powerfully reminded of the United Church of Christ Synod last July in Cleveland, where a caucus proposed a stop fracking resolution. We spent hours on national phone calls debating when fracking should be stopped. We finally proposed 2030 as the last fracking date.
It was a compromise after many “brackets,” what COP21 calls the matters that are kept in that famous parking lot where we put the things we don’t know how to decide. The Synod amended our so-called radical proposal and unanimously passed 2017 as the final date. We were gobsmacked, bemused, amused by the fact that our people were readier to go cold turkey than we were.
Something like that is happening around COP21. The people who know what it will take to do anything, much less something, much less something serious about rising sea levels are trying to accept serenity. The people who are fed up and on the outside are much more ready to get serious. They, like the people inside, have grandchildren.
As I write there are 100 more decisions to be made by the decision makers. Most have to do with what the first world polluters will pay in repentance and compensation for warming the planet. They also have to do with gender equality and refugee status. Why omit these matters? Because there is a fantasy we can deal with climate without dealing with it justly.
The illegal sit-ins have started and they are imaginative and fierce—insisting that the global climate emergency needs to trump France’s state of emergency.
Back to the prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” Most people call it the serenity prayer and focus on the accepting part. It actually is more balanced. It could also be called the change prayer. It could also be called the wisdom prayer.
The Pope has prevailed, in the way Occupy did, in naming the agenda as moral. No one can speak without using the word moral. Al Gore asks the moral questions this way: What must we do? What can we do? What will we do?
His triplet joins the triplet of the prayer. Of course we will have to accept some things that won’t budge. Of course we have to change what we can. And mostly we need the wisdom to know the difference.
Listen to my friend, the business-environment journalist Marc Gunther express his dismay. He is my son’s godfather. That son is the one with the three grandchildren. They are my clients as I write and struggle morally for wisdom.
I wish I could be optimistic about COP21, the climate negotiations coming to an end in Paris. I can’t. Even if the world’s countries keep their promises — known, in the mind-numbing argot of the UN as Intended Nationally Determined Commitments — the climate reductions they are promising don’t go far enough. . . . These unenforceable “commitments” are, at best, a step in the right direction and, at worse, a way for government leaders to try to fool their citizens and, perhaps, themselves into thinking they are doing the right thing.
If this sounds familiar, it should: big companies have been promising to cut their carbon output for a decade or more, setting targets and timelines of their own choosing. It hasn’t worked. Emissions from the world’s 500 largest businesses are rising, according. Scientists say emissions must fall to avoid catastrophic climate risks.
Voluntary carbon targets–for companies or countries–are not likely to get us where we need to go, I’m afraid. They make about as much sense as voluntary speed limits or tax rates.
President Mary Robinson of Ireland calls for zero carbon, zero poverty. I guess she is not serene. “Climate change will lead to further radicalization of those already isolated and in poverty,” she said. Doesn’t that motivate people to change what they can? Do we really want to live in a police state? Naomi Klein argues that people have to reclaim the streets on Saturday, no mater what the agreement is or isn’t. Why? “For Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.”
All week the glitter and glory of Paris has contrasted weirdly with the apocalypses being discussed. A lot of humor joins a lot of great slogans. Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s came out with a new ice cream, “Save our swirl.” All along the Champs Elysée you can ride a bicycle or swing on a swing to charge the lights along the way. Sponsored by IKEA and a dozen other corporations, the street is fun and the tourists and their children are enjoying the ride.
They are probably spending good money in the cafes, too. Polluters anonymous, anyone? Asking each other for help, anyone? No blame, no shame, especially if we serenely repent, wisely.
