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Pope Francis vs the UN: Who will save the world first?

Man, I wish I had written this. . .

“Everyone, it seems, recognises that Pope Francis’ encyclical is a striking document. But to really appreciate its significance, it’s worth contrasting it with another document that purports to tackle the same challenge: the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The SDGs have emerged from a long, complex process, stretching over the past four years. They are hanging on a promise to be able to eradicate “all poverty, in all its forms, everywhere” by 2030, and to do so in a way that moves us to a more environmentally sustainable economy.

But while the pope’s encyclical has caused a stir around the world, almost no one is excited about the SDGs. On the contrary, they live almost exclusively in the dry, technocratic world of international development. This isn’t for want of trying by the UN and others. They have invested a lot of money trying to whip up popular enthusiasm and would love nothing more than to see the sort of excitement that has greeted the encyclical.

The problem is that, unlike the encyclical, the SDGs are not fresh, or paradigm shifting. They don’t offer anything that gets the blood flowing. They can’t be sold as exciting because they simply aren’t.

This is a question of substance. The encyclical is visionary. It is bold, uncompromising and radical, where the SDGs are staid, timid and mired in a business-as-usual mentality.”

Read the whole essay at The Rules . . .

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Laudato Si’

51. Inequity affects not only individuals but entire countries; it compels us to consider an ethics of international relations. A true “ecological debt” exists, particularly between the global north and south, connected to commercial imbalances with effects on the environment, and the disproportionate use of natural resources by certain countries over long periods of time. The export of raw materials to satisfy markets in the industrialized north has caused harm locally, as for example in mercury pollution in gold mining or sulphur dioxide pollution in copper mining. There is a pressing need to calculate the use of environmental space throughout the world for depositing gas residues which have been accumulating for two centuries and have created a situation which currently affects all the countries of the world. The warming caused by huge consumption on the part of some rich countries has repercussions on the poorest areas of the world, especially Africa, where a rise in temperature, together with drought, has proved devastating for farming. There is also the damage caused by the export of solid waste and toxic liquids to developing countries, and by the pollution produced by companies which operate in less developed countries in ways they could never do at home, in the countries in which they raise their capital: “We note that often the businesses which operate this way are multinationals. They do here what they would never do in developed countries or the so-called first world. Generally, after ceasing their activity and withdrawing, they leave behind great human and environmental liabilities such as unemployment, abandoned towns, the depletion of natural reserves, deforestation, the impoverishment of agriculture and local stock breeding, open pits, riven hills, polluted rivers and a handful of social works which are no longer sustainable”.

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Could California or other states provide international climate finance?

Noted climate scholar Benito Mueller of Oxford University and Oxford Climate Policy has a new “Think Piece” called “The Paris Predictability Problem: What to do about climate finance for the 2020 Climate Agreement?” His essay dissects a subset of the problems in the international climate negotiations associated with the provision of financial support by rich countries for mitigation and adaptation in poor countries, captured by the term “climate finance.” Mueller’s focus on predictability is an alternative to a focus on the scale of such finance or its “additionality” (whether it is not simply repurposed from other development aid).

There is much of interest in this essay, but what particularly caught my attention was his suggestion that subnational sources—like California’s cap and trade program—might be a possible source of appropriately predictable financing. (Note that this is different from considering whether “offsets” under a cap and trade policy could be sourced internationally.)

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