Climate Week — September 21-27th 2015
It was a grueling week for me (I do not really enjoy 8 AM meetings and I had several this past week). On Monday evening, I saw three short films sponsored by the Tzu Chi Foundation, s 50 year old philanthropic worldwide Buddhist Organization (www.tzuchi.us) that were about some of the people impacted by Climate Change.
They were 1) The Disappearing Frontier, about a small Alaska town that is at risk for falling into the sea due to the ice melting. The second firm was called Keep it Grand, about Native Americans fighting a developer to not build a gigantic tourist settlement at the Grand Canyon. Here, the balance between economic growth in this heavily depressed area is juxtaposed against the natural beauty that is worth maintaining in a pristine condition. The final film was called Stung by Climate, that was about the beekeeper’s worldwide concern about the health and survival of their colonies. In a nutshell (or a beehive if you will), due to unpredictable weather bees are dying. This is not only about honey production; it’s about crop pollination, which in turn impacts the supply and cost of food people around the world. Are we heading towards a “pollination disaster?” I sure hope not.
The event was moderated by guest speaker Jason Smerdon, Lamont Associate Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Lamont-Doherty is near where I live in Rockland County and has some of the world’s foremost scientists in the field of climatology.
On Tuesday, I attended a cocktail party hosted by Net Impact, a not-for-profit funded by some of the world’s largest corporations (including several you would not think about being into social impact).
Here is their mandate:
Net Impact Corporate Relationship Policy
Approved by Net Impact’s Board of Directors May, 2008
Net Impact was founded on the principle and belief that business, as the most prevalent and powerful institution in the world today, must increasingly become a vehicle for addressing social and environmental issues. In conjunction with that perspective, Net Impact also recognizes that one of the greatest opportunities for impact lies in affecting the leadership, policies, and operations of the world’s largest corporations. As such, Net Impact will actively seek to develop relationships with major corporations that can advance the organization’s mission to change the world through business. The nature of these relationships can and will take on many forms, including the receipt of funds through corporate sponsorships and the participation of key representatives of major companies on Net Impact’s Board of Directors.
In developing corporate relationships, we will always seek to align ourselves with the most progressive organizations in the world, to both learn from and help advance their CSR-related efforts. But we also recognize that no corporation is flawless in its social and environmental impacts, and perhaps the greatest opportunities exist with those who have yet to make major commitments to social responsibility and sustainability. We will thus consider relationship opportunities with all corporations provided two conditions exist: (1) that corporate intentions for association are consistent with Net Impact’s mission and ideals, and (2) that there is some demonstrated/emerging commitment to CSR that suggests that a positive future trajectory is likely.
What I came away from the meeting was a not-for-profit called Disaster Recovery Institute International (www.drii.org); DRI seems like a very interesting organization with some high powered individuals involved with their initiative; that seems in part to hold conferences and certify professionals in the field of disaster recovery through a series of tests and documentation of experience. These certifications range from associate to certified in the fields of health care, risk management, business continuity, advanced continuity, public sector and audit.
These certifications are an effort to train middle level disaster recovery professionals and seems a step towards better defining a “resiliency” industry. This resiliency industry is definitely starting with the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities funding up to $1 million per City to hire Chief Resilience Officers (CROs) that ideally report to the Mayor of the City and define resiliency as much more than just environmental resiliency, I believe.
On Wednesday morning, I attended ND-GAIN: Corporations and Climate Adaptation: Innovation in Emerging Economies. ND stands for Notre Dame and they have developed the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index. I attended their seminar last year as well and it was quite well attended at the New York headquarters of Baker McKenzie, a law firm with a very strong environmental law practice led by Rick Seines, who is based in their Chicago office. Joyce Coffee, a very capable executive is responsible for the ND-GAIN initiative (www.ND-GAIN.org).
The winners of the ND-GAIN corporate Adaptation Prize were DADTCO for a mobile Cassava Starch Plant in Mozambique. DADTCO processes fresh cassava close to smallholder farmers instead of transporting the highly perishable roots over long distances to a central factory. They even used Cassava to make beer with Miller Coors Brewing Company. The technology unlocks the opportunity for Cassava, a major food crop in Africa, to replace expensive imported cereals and boost the national economy. Cassava farming is adaptable to extreme weather events and buffers changes in global grain price changes.
The other winner was a joint venture between AECOM and IBM. They developed a Disaster Resilience Scorecard to help communities understand, communicate and put into effect actions to reduce disaster risk. The scorecard was developed pro-bono to assist the United Nation’s efforts to reduce disasters and support effective risk management for cities to boost economic attractiveness and liveability through better preparation as well as lower insurance coverage costs.
On Thursday morning, I had the privilege of participating in a three hour UN conference sponsored by France Strategie, France and Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, Italy called Funding the Low Carbon Transition: The Role of the Financial System.
There were about 100 people in attendance and speakers included:
Jean Pisani-Ferry, Commissioner General for Policy Planning, France Strategie, France,
Carlo Carraro, Research Director, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, Italy.
Dipak Dasgupta, Board Member of Green Climate Fund, India,
Pascal Canfin, Co-Chair, Presidential Commission on Climate Finance and former French Development Minister.
Thomas Heller, Executive Director Climate Policy Initiative, USA.
Marcene Broadwater, Global Head of Climate Change Strategy and Business Development, IFC, World Bank.
Laurence Tubiana, Special Representative of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs for the 2015 Paris Climate Conference to be held on December 12, 2015.
Etienne Espagne, CEPII, France (Economist with public Think Tank)
Simon Zadek — Senior Fellow at the Global Green Growth Institute and the International Institute of Sustainable Development.
Jean-Charles Hourcade, Director of Research, Centre National de la recherce Scientifique (CNRS). Jean-Charles has been involved with all the conferences since 1999 I believe (Tokyo Protocol COP1) and admitted that to date not much has been accomplished. Everyone is hoping that the momentum we now have will carry over into Paris COP 21.
Alfredo Sirkis, Executive director of the “Centro Brasil no Clima” think tank and former Chairman of the Joint Climate Change Commission of the Brazilian Congress, Brazil.
Some interesting ideas I gleaned from this conference were: 1) an attempt to de-couple Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from Green House Gases (GHG), 2) the concept of a Climate Stress Test (say what would happen in a 4 or 5 degree C increase (we are trying to limit it to 2 degree Celsius), 3) Derivatives can replace equity in financing low carbon investments and derivatives appear to be 200 basis points cheaper than equity, 4) Carbon Taxes will have to be done on a country by country basis (there will not be a uniform cap and trade or carbon tax arrangement) and it will be an uphill battle.
Simon Zadek, in particular, was impressive with his statement that incremental changes to Financial Systems are not enough given the fundamental systemic changes that are needed. He also said that smaller Central Banks are acting more pro-actively about lowering carbon versus some very conservative large central banks.
This U.N. think tank was using terms like “regime complex” and “The Energy Union” in an attempt to truly unite nations in anticipation of COP 21 in Paris this December.
After that meeting, I needed a break before the evening meeting so I caught the new Man From U.N.C.L.E movie by Guy Ritchie; this brought back fond memories for me as it was a 1960’s TV series that I enjoyed watching as a child (I am not sure I ever was really a child…).
The evening session was at the New York City Bar building — if you have never been to the building it is quite experience. The large room is quite opulent with portraits of many lawyers from yesteryear. I have had the privilege to be in the hall before so it held less allure for me. The presentation was about Building Energy Bench marking and was moderated by Stuart Brodsky of the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate. The Speakers were Laurie Kerr, Urban Green Council, constantine Kontakosta, NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress, Cliff Majersik, Institute for Market Transformation and Jeff Perlman, CEO of Bright Power.
The Urban Green Council is doing a lot of good work concerning bench marking. Check out their “metered” site. http://metered.nyc/property/751-Park-Avenue. As this website gets better and more data I think it will be very helpful in comparing building efficiency among the various property types in New York City. In many ways, NYC is a model for other cities in terms of data measurement concerning building efficiency. http://urbangreencouncil.org/.
Jeff Perlman has a PhD in Physics and about 65 employees in his Bright Power company. He specializes in multi-family properties, primarily for larger developers but has experience in most property types and seems to have expanded beyond New York City. I have met with Jeff and some of his team and am quite impressed with their knowledge and ability to objectively evaluate building systems and help benchmark and advise their client’s on energy efficiency.
The last meeting I attended was at Columbia University at the Maison Francaise (www.maisonfrancaise.org). This event was entitled 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21): What to expect and should follow?
It featured a conversation between Laurence Tubiana (see above UN special representative) and Scott Barrett (an economist from Columbia’s Earth Institute) and moderated by the NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt.
The discussion was quite animated and the interaction between a public policy expert (Laurence) with an economist (Scott) and a scientist (Gavin) demonstrated how everyone views climate change from a different perspective and that contributes to its complexity and difficulty to find a common solution.
Wally Broecker of Lamont-Doherty spoke and gave his “backstop” solution if the policymakers cannot contain global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. He spoke about possible cloud seeding to reduce carbon in the atmosphere and carbon sequester and recapture by storing excess carbon somewhere. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~broecker/Home_files/Wally%27sCarbonWorld.pdf. Wally’s website contains all his writings over his 60 year career.
I will just end this post by saying I strongly favor what I call the “diet” approach to achieving a low carbon environment, i.e., by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels we will suffer some inconveniences not unlike the rationing of essentials that happened during WWII but we will hopefully reduce carbon emissions to avert catastrophe. There will have to be some inevitable “pain” by developed countries to help less developed countries; this only seems fair but I do think population control has to be part of the equation with respect to less developed countries.
The scientific approach to reducing carbon through sequester or some other scientific solution actually scares me more; perhaps because I am not as confident that scientific solutions are any better (and possibly worse) than our current fossil fuel dilemma. Fossil fuel extraction is a scientific process as well.
I leave with you with the premise behind a movie I recently saw called SnowPiercer. Here, in this dystopian sci-fi flick, the scientists decide to try to lower the earth’s temperature and through their efforts, effectively freeze the planet. http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/snowpiercer-20140626.
Bottom line — I do not believe there is a safe quick technological fix here…
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