Back to Copenhagen by R.Guillet
Rémi Guillet is an ECN Engineer (formerly ENSM), he graduated in 1966. He is a doctor in energy mechanics of the Univ. H. Poincaré Nancy 1 (2002) and has a DEA Economie Paris 13 (2001)
Fire 2009, and 2010 opens its "solar" cycle.
This is how our planet evolves around its "pivot": the Sun, a star essential to life on Earth, however precarious and fragile it may be! But before we turn the page, what will remain of the completed year? Undoubtedly not the "Copenhagen summit" unless you are interested in the anthology of missed meetings as one sees a blooper again!
For the world, the lanterns of the Danish capital went out in a virtual panic to hear boos from ordinary citizens but convinced of the importance of the issue discussed.
We can say that after this summit, the disappointment is equal to the too full of hope of all, if not of a large majority of indoor and outdoor participants, observers of all ranks, not to mention the most committed and aware of the environmental problem , "KO standing" (like the army of Cambyses (1)).
And the prospect of "living together", consensual, at the global level, to face the new climate and energy situation has once again become the utopia of utopias.
So the Responsible for the World and their cohort of sherpas returned from this meeting announced as a turning point not to be missed, decisive for our survival ... Returned discreetly, first satisfied that they had not departed from their defense mission of "their domestic interests" for which they are democratically mandated ... Returned without being able to dispense with discharging into the atmosphere for their return, the second tranche of the few hundred thousand tons of greenhouse gases necessary for their " air Transport...
We do not want to come back here to the carbon tax and its procrastination but rather to remind that aircraft fuel (kerosene) unlike fuels and other "terrestrial" fossil fuels is still not taxed! This since the Chicago convention in the aftermath of the Second World War ... an arrangement then taken to "launch" this type of transport which is still particularly bulimic today in terms of fuel consumption with a disastrous impact on the upper atmosphere. We even note that it is, on the contrary, low cost air travel which is developing today, following a recommendation from a famous and recent commission for the liberalization of French growth (2). What to meditate on!
Likewise, the ecological diaspora was able to recover its status as a (diffuse) global movement in opposition to the official challenges of growth and other development. A movement probably weakened by the inability of "politicians" to take a step forward, weakened by the echoes from a college of "scientists" little sensitized or even "without faith" vis-à-vis the weight of the human activity on a planetary warming still very hypothetical for some of them ... and who knew how to seize the opportunity "Copenhagen" to be heard and to sow doubt. For these, we would again want to dwell on the merits of respecting the precautionary principle "when we do not know" or on the importance of sparing the oil resource in particular, when we are aware of everything. what the Western growth of the last fifty years owes it when we are told that the "barrel has a bottom" that we now see!
So, the failure of Copenhagen can be daunting ...
In contrast, among the most relevant results of this UN meeting, we can see a little more how much appropriate decision-making rules are necessary for "world governance" (3). Indeed, as at the level of democratic States where - in practice - consensus cannot be the decision-making rule, it would not be fairer if, each country having a voice, UN decisions are also taken according to the rule. majority vote?
But let's go back to the economic issue underlying this summit ...
We will pass on the account of lack of sleep, of uninterrupted toil, the words of our Minister of ecology, energy held during a debriefing hot, admitting to have misunderstood the underlying economic stake at this summit !!!
When we know - let's reiterate - what economic development and other growth owe to fossil fuels (4), we remain stunned!
Thus, the need for the emergence of a new model is a prerequisite for a real change of course, first for ecological reasons, then because of the scarcity of fossil energy wealth.
In the meantime, the current development model remains the "mirror to the larks" of emerging countries and those who aspire to be. Indeed, we know that after the environmental problems and climatic drifts with increasingly disastrous consequences (at an increasingly high societal cost (5)), the world population, in exponential demographic growth, has no chance. to realize his "Western dream" in this context of scarcity ... and the near disappearance of the manna of "easy" (fossil) energy.
The global project must therefore strive to offer all countries a fair future, that is to say, to give emerging countries the opportunity to develop technologies adapted to the new context, to poor countries to follow them on this path, in the so-called developed countries to initiate an essential change of course ... towards new, more qualitative, less quantitative, softer, less hard challenges (6).
A middle path of wisdom footprint
It is likely that, in his heart of hearts, the great majority of politicians - and of the greatest - will have left Copenhagen with, intact, the idea that she owed but could not engage further, with the idea that the issue was beyond his mandate.
However, as we have already written, states will necessarily come to an agreement but on minimalist provisions (5) which will then have to be applied by all (a real challenge in itself!).
Thus, this text would like to reiterate that, according to the change of course strategies desired and supported by the largest number of citizens, each country can now go beyond the prescriptions that can exist by encouraging, via tax refunds and other appropriations. taxes, all its citizens, civil or moral, public and private to be as virtuous as possible: an early preparation for an inevitable future is a strategy quickly win for all!
And after Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) - a concept that is very popular today - we must highlight that of the social responsibility of countries (RSP)!
The expectations of education
The current adult population will have a hard time shedding its "canons of success" through appearance, material and a need for "ever more" technology, travel still ready to choose the 4x4 or other large sedans for fun, probably ready to accept the wearing of gas masks if the announced shortage of oil were to be long overdue, in that preceded by the health problem!
So we must bet instead on the next generation, now teenagers, to teach them other forms of "wealth" (7), more interior and intimate than "small is beautiful", that the planet is beautiful near home. itself, that the practice of this proximity declined in a thousand ways is crammed with ecological virtues and thus prepare the essential basis for the construction of another model of development, for the establishment of other challenges of individual and collective success. .. more concerned with global benefits, equity, long term ...
Thus, with the CSR (Corporate Social Resonsabilité) and RSP (Corporate Social Responsibility Country) the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility Citizen (RSC) is to promote!
We wrote this text the day after the closure of the said Copenhagen summit. For technical reasons it could not be broadcast before January. So what is its use in appearing several weeks later, in coming back to a "non-event"? Of course, it's up to the reader to decide!
As far as we are concerned, we have chosen this "Laconic Return to Copenhagen" to underline how difficult it will be to break with a development model which has made people dream, which makes people dream, which still makes people dream (as we dream with regret of the past!), dreams that are all the more strong and nurtured because there is no known alternative!
Thus breaking with the current model requires a radical challenge to our culture (civilization?). To invent another one will require a lot of time but first supposes a conjuncture which does not seem yet there ...
References:
(1) This metaphor has become obvious because of the parallel between the cause of the disappearance of this army, due to an extraordinary natural environmental phenomenon and the cause which drives the ecological fight. (Cambyses was a Persian king who, in 525 BC, undertook to conquer Egypt and then strove to destroy traces of the Egyptian religious past. According to legend, the 50000 men who made up his army then died, "standing", all buried by a meteoric sandstorm ...)
(2) Commission for the Liberation of Growth - Attali Report 2007 -
(3) See on this site the article "G 8, G 13, G 20": Let's agree with the point of view of Joseph Stiglizt "
(4) See on this site the article "Energy and growth: a brief summary"
(5) See the chapter devoted to "social responsibility and corporate governance" by R. Guillet, in the book by Laurent Leloup and devoted to "Sustainable finance" (publication early 2010)
(6) See on this site the article "Advocacy for another growth"
(7) See on this site "Small text on Having and Being" or the two facies of "wealth"
https://www.econologie.com/retour-sur-la ... -4247.html