Opinion Sur
The international agreement on weather signed in Paris by 195 nations is a first step for the entire humanity in preventing and mitigating the disastrous effects on the environment of the economic and population growth. Facing the intrinsic difficulties of every collective action for the common good, the agreement is aimed at developing awareness in the public opinion and building a new solidary subjectivity.
“Twenty-three hundred years ago, Aristotle observed that “For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest.”
At the end of 2015 an agreement was signed in Paris by 195 countries, destined to decrease and mitigate the harmful impact of human activity on the planet’s weather. In a nutshell, the objective is to avoid a warming of the Earth’s atmosphere that could threaten life, not only human but from other species as well, and degrade the environment in an irreversible way.
The representatives that signed the agreement had celebrated it as a key milestone in history. They praised the diplomats’ expertise in avoiding tensions and confrontations among diverse national interests, and thus reaching an agreement considered satisfactory by everyone involved. In turn, the critics of the agreement—that share the desire of stopping the planet’s environmental degradation—contend that it is just a mere expression of principles and that, as with other good intentions, they just paved the way to hell. “Principles are good,” Napoleon used to say with cynicism, “but they don’t commit us to anything.”
I examined the terms and clauses of the agreement in their substantive merits and I can say it is neither too much nor too little. If the terms of the agreement went into effect as they are, in the best scenario the rhythm at which humanity goes towards disaster would slow down. Much depends on knowing how the weather works, issue upon which too much uncertainty prevails. But it also depends on what can happen in the near future. Is it about the beginning of a revolution of the energy system we live by as well as public policies that support it? Or rather is it about a paper agreement that promises more than is able to produce? It all depends on the action the different national and multinational leaderships will take. As the beautiful Italian expression that rimes as a verse sings: “Tra il dire e il fare c’è di mezzo il mare” (between saying and doing there is a sea in the middle).
It is hard to convene in a common approach to uncertain risks in a future that for our short lives might seem distant still. It is something like drawing up a will in favor of our heirs and their heirs as well. However, 195 countries did it. There is more: they committed themselves to act individually and jointly to reach consensual and measurable goals. Rich countries committed to financial and technically help poorer ones. And all of them—rich and poor—committed themselves to keep the increase in world temperature below 2° centigrade.
So far so good, but let’s examine the shortcomings. It is evident that it is neither a treaty nor a contract. There is more yearning than obligation endorsed by a transfer of funds and protected by actionable sanctions. For example, there are no limits to the emission of gases from vessels and aircraft. There is no mechanism to establish an international price for coal. Countries only commit themselves to keep each other informed of their actions and keep their plans transparent. It is something like peer reviews in any scientific discipline, where papers circulate among experts. In the event of non-compliance or fraud there is no other sanction than moral disapproval. Even worse in the unlikely event of a strict compliance with the agreement by everybody involved, global warming cannot be restrained below the 2° centigrade rule.
Give these severe limitations; is it worth taking the Paris accord seriously? To answer this question, and given my characterization of the agreement, I will imagine the 195 participant countries as if they formed an academic department of a prestigious university. I chose this venue in part for my experience and in part because as a sociologist I am interested in the dynamic of collective action.
Each signing country must examine its plans and submit them to the peer review. Monitoring and transparency of those plans will be much greater than what exist today. Emergent countries with larger emissions (China and India) will be incorporated into this system. We could call this a model of “monitored aspirations.” Even more important, everybody commits himself to produce a reduction-of-emissions plan and submit it to the peer review. None of the signers can say that he does not care meeting the targets. With one exception: under a republican government the United States can be exempted from the exam and thus torpedo the agreements. In such case, the rest of the world led by China should tell them that, after 50 years of considering themselves primus inter pares and thus superior, they are no longer superior. The only thing they can obtain with this attitude is that their friends no longer trust them and their enemies no longer fear them.
Now I will assume the role of devil’s advocate with practical and theoretical arguments that will fuel doubts and skepticism. Among the practical arguments, I will say that the last 25 years of international negotiations regarding the weather, both the carbon dioxide emissions and the accumulated carbon stock in the atmosphere, as well as the per capita emission has increased dangerously. If preventive actions had been taken then the current challenge would not be as serious as it is today. It is true that the carbon emission by productive unit (example: super modern plant with low emissions) has decreased in the last years, but the total economic growth in the world has annulled the incidence of those individual improvements. The summation is negative. This brings us to a conclusion that runs counter to all the assumptions and the ideology of economics and of the business world: “growth at all costs.” That assumption becomes less and less sustainable.
To exit this crossroad there are two routes: the first is to formulate truly ambitious plans, and the second is to make massive investments in alternative and innovative technology. In a further horizon I will add a third path: thinking economic models with a very different definition of “growth” from the one that prevails today. A heterodox school of economic thought is represented by Elinor Ostrom, Nobel-prize winner in Economics in 2009, who through her work Governing the Commons: the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (1990) makes clear that within certain social groups it is possible that cooperation and collective responsibility prevail over the exploitation of natural resources. There are groups who have developed mechanisms and institutions that do not follow the privatizing logic or the prevalent of the State. But it is a minority position with marginal examples.
The solution would be something like as if on a global level and in relation to weather it could be feasible to create some sort of “Apollo program” as did the United States for travelling to the moon. Such project would imply two things: a great technological effort and an attainable consensus mechanism that I call “planetary sovereignty.”
I will not dwell on the technological effort in this essay, but I hope for decisive changes in the frenzied pace of technological innovations in which we are embarked, issue about which there is a large and positive bibliography. I will focus on another mechanism: that of the collective action and attainable consensus, on which there have been many theoretical models in social sciences.
The social trap or paradox of this collective agreement can be summarized in the words of the social theorist and commentator Barry Schwartz [see “Tyranny for the Commons Man” in The National Interest (July-August 2009)]:
“How does one escape the dilemma in which multiple individuals acting in their own rational self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared limited resource—even when it is clear it serves no one in the long run? (…) We are now dealing with a tragedy of the global commons. There is one Earth, one atmosphere, one source of water and six million people are sharing it. Badly. The wealthy are overgrazing, and the poor can’t wait to join them.”
What is true for individuals is also true for countries; when each individual acts in pursuit of one’s own interest but every interest gets ruined collectively. This modern formulation of the old theory developed by Thomas Hobbes was made by the theoretician G. Hardin in 1968 (his article was originally published as “The Tragedy of Commons” in Science, v. 162 (1968), pp. 1243-1248.) Since then every analyst that focuses on human action has not found a satisfactory solution within the homos oeconomicus framework or rational choice. For this reason, and since Hobbes, political theory was forced to search for a solution outside that framework and name an actor above the individuals that can impose its diverse motives in the name of a superior and collective rationality. This actor is the State. According to this reasoning, when individual action leads to a crisis, generally an unresolved conflict of all against all, only the authoritarian imposition “from above” will be able to end the impasse and cut the Gordian knot. He who exercises this decision is sovereign and the exercise of this “last resort” capability accepted by every actor is called sovereignty (see Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. George D. Schwab, trans. MIT Press, 1985 / University of Chicago Press; University of Chicago edition, 2004 with an Introduction by Tracy B. Strong. Original publication: 1922, 2nd edition, 1934)
Until recently sovereignty was the exclusive prerogative of nation-states and was recognized by international law. But in an era of intense globalization, common problems to every state have overwhelmed each one’s ability to solve them, and have diminished their sovereignty. At the international level, the “tragedy of commons” is fully in force. It can only be overcome by a global government or a super-State. In the absence of such Leviathan exercising a planetary sovereignty, only one or two superpowers, exercising the monopoly or oligopoly of decisional power and de facto acting as a global police force could stabilize the situation. This was the “solution” to the dilemma applied during the Cold War and for a short term after the end of that bipolar geopolitics, with the surviving supremacy of the United States. But now we are in full multi-polar reconfiguration of the world, with a clear decrease in sovereignty, both national and supranational.
Experience shows that a group of nations without a central government above them is incapable of facing serious crises at hard times. In my articles regarding Europe I have tried to show that impasse. Sometimes a serious external threat leads to the consolidation of a central power. Such is the case of a war against an identifiable and declared enemy, with intentions of attacking. But there are other dangers and challenges that lead to a serious crisis without producing a solidary and “Hobbesian” reaction. In this case, the “enemy” presents itself in a catastrophic and dramatic way when it is too late.
Regarding climate, would it be possible to have an effective collective action in absence of a planetary sovereignty? The drama of the so-called tragedy of commons resides in that we are the main enemy in this field as we have created an environmental Frankenstein.
The promissory novelty of the Paris accords is the creation of mechanisms and protocols of collective awareness, with the consequent de-legitimization of a pure national collective conscience. We cannot move out of a bad globalization taking a step backwards, as is proclaimed by the frenzied and thoughtless nationalisms that today pullulate each time there is a severe crisis. Facing the weather challenge there is no more room for the slogan “Our country or death.” We need another one more attuned to the situation: “Our common house (as the Pope says) or death.”
In conclusion: the devil’s advocate has convincing arguments, but has not won the match yet. Happy New Year.
