We recognize that climate change is a global collective action problem. We recognize that every year, the world pushes environmental policies to deal with climate change at the local and national level. Every year, we carry signs, chant our slogans, and tell our children that we’re fighting for them to have a livable world before it’s too late. And every year, scientists tell us that another year has passed where the world at large moved more or less along a business-as-usual emissions pathway.
This should come as no surprise: from a collective action perspective, our international climate accords are not up to the task. National emissions goals are developed independent of the scientific forecasts, no one independently monitors countries’ progress, and countries that fail to meet their goals face neither incentives nor repercussions. The plan at present is to rely on the unfaltering goodwill of every political actor across the planet over the next century, with every bad incentive working against us, and every backslider free to take advantage.
In theory, this shouldn’t work. In practice, it has not for thirty years.
While we applaud all national and subnational efforts against climate change, we recognize that we need to do categorically better. One day, the successful framework of a Real Climate Accord must include:
- A global carbon budget, supported by science and linked to a given level of warming, which is
- Apportioned over time between nations based on their wealth, existing energy mix, development status, and other political considerations;
- Measurable and reported by a designated independent monitoring body; and
- Enforceable, with the intent of creating effective incentives to comply, by at least two types of mechanisms:
- Sanctions: for developed states, the imposition of carbon tariffs or other trade penalties for non-compliance
- Development and adaptation funding: for developing states, the withholding of climate adaptation and clean development funding, which must be otherwise supplied at a level that effectively incentivizes their participation
A Real Climate Accord may include more specific elements, but it may also allow flexibility in how to comply otherwise.
This is a huge demand to make, a huge change in how we align as an international community. But every impossible change starts with a demand. And in this case, our impossible demand foreshadows an inevitable shift.
We all have an essential role to play. We call on legislatures, governments, corporations, NGOs, citizens, and faith groups to incorporate the demand for a Real Climate Accord into national legislation, their missions, their platforms, and their public communications. At every juncture, a Real Climate Accord must be demanded until it is delivered.