Climate policy has failed

John Michael Greer writes: 

If the point of the last three decades of climate change activism was to slow the rate at which greenhouse gases enter the atmosphere, the results are in and the activists have failed. Nor is there any reason to think that doing more of the same will yield anything else... Riding the Climate Toboggan, John Michael Greer, 6 September

'Climate activism became a big public cause about halfway along this graph. Notice any effect?'

 

Some might argue that, without climate activism, the trend line would have become steeper in recent years, but it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that a great deal of policymakers' thinking and public resources have gone into trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, none of it has had the slightest discernible effect. This was foreseeable.

I suggest that we clarify what it is we actually want to achieve. Do we want to change the climate, or should we instead aim to reduce the impact of adverse climatic events on human, animal and plant life? Most likely, we should target a wide array of approaches that would fit into either category. The next step is to issue Climate Stability Bonds, which would reward the achievement of our impact-reduction goals regardless of whether bondholders do so by trying to influence the climate or by more direct means, such as, for example, reinforcing levees, building new homes for people currently living in flood-prone areas etc.

Climate Stability Bonds would have the long-term focus that current policymaking eschews; the issuers could stipulate that the bonds shall not be redeemed until all targeted indicators fall into an approved range for a sustained period, which could be three decades; bondholders would still profit by doing whatever they can to achieve the targeted goals, seeing the value of their holding rise, then selling their bonds to whoever is best placed to continue with achieving the goals. I have written many treatments of the Climate Stability Bond concept; all of which are freely available here, and there are also numerous posts on this blog (see here, here and here, for instance).