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WHAT WOULD GANDHI DO?

Dave Hampton* highlights the playground politics of climate change and says it is time for the West to stop griping and clean up its act.

Where is the calm, inner voice of wisdom that will guide our world leaders to a new, safer place?  Take the analogy of a playground - quite a big one - one shared by a lot of school-children, some from the very richest homes in the world, and many from the very poorest.  The playground is almost knee-high in litter after 100 or so years of no-one cleaning up. 

What is needed - in playground politics terms - to break the stalemate and to clear up the mess (which is growing faster than it is being cleared up) is for all the rich kids to stop dropping litter entirely and to start to pick up all their historical litter.  It is important they do this unilaterally.  They need to stop whinnying about the large and growing numbers of poor kids, who can only afford to drop one small item of rubbish per year, when they are each dropping 100 times that amount. What is needed is one or two brave, rich kids to inspire others around them by saying: 'I will start this clear-up even if no-one else will.'  Because the: 'I will, if you will,' game ends in us drowning in our own litter.  This is one of the ways that the pupils might discover a way out of their mess.  One or two of them start to save the world by irrational acts of love and compassion that turn out to be contagious so that the tiny few, cutting their own individual rubbish footprint, vanish insignificantly unless they inspire others around them to follow, leading from nothingness to a huge revolution.  I am not sure the playground has time for this to happen, but it has started.  There is voluntary carbon detox in individual states and federal government and in the transition towns movement in the UK.

The second option is that all in the playground agree some sort of overall optimum deal -  some framework with the wisdom of Solomon.  Remember the one about two mothers arguing about who was the real mother of a one-year-old baby?  Neither would give up their claim, so Solomon thought about it and said that the baby should be cut in two each having half. At which point the true mother gave up her claim to the child.

Contraction and Convergence (C&C) represents the best possible reconciliation.  But it is very tough for both rich and poor to accept.

It is tough for the US and UK to buy into because it require the west to shrink emissions rapidly.  The rich kid in us says we cannot stop dropping our litter that fast.  And it is tougher still for the wronged nations to accept because it is still unfair inasmuch as it does not wipe the slate clean.  For historical litter, it lets the spoilt rich kids off the hook for past crimes of emission and says we will forgive you for past littering as long as you start to clear up your own properly mess from now on.

Which is the bigger ask?  Which is the bigger act of generosity?  It is obvious.  We expect a lot of the poor nations when asking them to accept this framework.  It is the poor kids in the playground - as ever it was - who are being asked to be the bigger person and to be the bigger hero and to accept the pain of injustice a while longer.

Crucially, I do not see a better global framework anywhere near the negotiating table.  C&C says that every person on the planet has the same right to drop litter, but that we can only drop a small amount each within the capacity of the planet to deal with it.  It says that the rich kids have blown their fair share massively already.  But it tries to embrace these spoilt brats in a global compact by treating them with kid gloves, forgetting about past injustice as long as they commit to shrinking their bubble rapidly from here on.  It creates the basis for big wealth flow, from rich to poor, during the detox period as the rich kids learn to cope with dropping the same litter as poor kids, and borrow temporarily some of their 'litter rights' as they come clean.  It even generates a little leeway for poor kids to up their litter a little bit, as they grow richer.

It is reconciliatory.  It is healing.  It is workable.  And, as far as I can see, it is the best offer likely to make the negotiating table.  It is rooted in future fairness, and it is a plan for mutual survival.

The alternative is one in which the rich kids  perpetuate the current injustice, watching the poor die as they cling on, in an increasingly-turbulent tidal wave, ending with them too getting swept away.  The poor kids can cling on to the fact that they are 'right', and have been 'wronged' and are by far the biggest victim. 

Both have to let go and join the swirling current of a global movement, focusing on what is right and not what is wrong, and to hope that we can fix this if we unify and agree something, somehow.  C&C is pure solution to sore pollution. 

It is not fair to ask poor kids to accept such a future framework because they should not be in the mess that we created.  And it is not likely that the west will ever accept that it has to pick up all past litter, as well as almost stopping the dropping of litter entirely.  C&C starts to reverse the process of expansion and divergence. And it starts to heal and reconcile, unify and take us forward, perhaps not in total fairness, but at least towards it.

*Dave Hampton was a sustainability consultant and Director of ABS before becoming 'The Carbon Coach'.  He coaches individuals (including celebrities, CEOs and VIPs) in their relationship with carbon dioxide and works with children and community groups.