Saturday, 15 December. Bali, Indonesia. Bianca Jagger, Chair of the World Future Council, said today in Bali: “Leaders of the industrialised nations present in Bali have failed in their moral duty. They have used the US’s decision not to sign any specific carbon emissions reduction treaty as an excuse for their own inaction.”

The World Future Council supports Al Gore’s suggestion that world leaders should sideline the US and forge ahead to Copenhagen in 2009, with or without US commitment.

Bianca Jagger said, “This clearly demonstrates what the World Future Council is advocating. If we are serious about averting climate change catastrophe, we must think in revolutionary terms, and transform our way of life, restoring rather than destroying life on earth. We must embark upon a global renewable energy revolution: if we are to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2020, we must replace our carbon-driven economy with a renewable, carbon-absorbing energy economy.”

We have experienced an industrial revolution. We have experienced a technological revolution. It will take a global renewable energy revolution, similar in scale and consequence to those two, to avert catastrophe. As Hermann Scheer, member of the German Bundestag and the World Future Council, said, “This cannot be achieved with the method of ‘talk globally – postpone nationally,’ but only with the method of ‘think globally – act locally, regionally and nationally.’”

Herbie Girardet, co-founder of the World Future Council, said, “To deal with the looming climate tragedy requires us to redirect global money flows on a massive scale: towards mainstreaming renewable energy and towards repairing the capacity of the biosphere to absorb greenhouse gases. We owe it to coming generations to leave them a thriving planet which they, in turn, can pass on intact to their own descendents.”

So far, our politicians have failed the test of leadership. So if this revolution is not to come from them, it must come from us. We know what is at stake, and we know what we can do about it. Now is the time for each of us to act.

UNFCCC, Bali, 11 December. Today, Bianca Jagger called on the delegates participating in the Bali conference to agree on vital political and financial measures to implement drastic emissions reduction targets and efforts to restore the planet’s ecosystems. The earth is perilously close to dramatic climate change that threatens to spiral out of control. If the rich, industrialised countries want to limit average global temperatures, they will have to commit to a legally binding reduction of 80% in carbon emissions by 2020, whilst working vigorously to restore the earth’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gases. Current pledges of 80% C02 emissions reductions by 2050 are irresponsible given the gravity of the current situation: we have already reached the stage of dangerous climate change. The task now is to prevent catastrophic climate chaos.

Bianca Jagger said: “We must agree on goals and legally binding measures on climate protection now, not in the future. To make enough of a difference, we must replace a carbon-driven economy with a carbon-absorbing economy.

“Recent studies show that even the most alarming predictions by the IPCC were too conservative. Their suggestion, that we should limit average global temperature rise to 2°C, is a dangerous compromise. We have already experienced a rise of 0.73°C in average global temperature: a rise of 2°C is three times that. Agreeing on a 2°C cap is agreeing to the legitimisation of a potential climate change catastrophe.”

In the fight against climate change, the UNFCCC also has to consider the question of “climate justice”. Developing countries suffer most from the impacts of climate change, even though their economies have not benefited from fossil fuel-driven industrialisation. These countries can only commit to “clean development” if financial support and technology transfer is made available to them.

Bianca Jagger said, “Justice is the litmus test for any measure designed to combat climate change.” That ‘justice’ includes justice between countries, justice within countries, justice between generations and justice for mother earth. Developing countries have a right to modern technologies to help them cope with the impacts of climate change. “Climate justice means giving poorer countries privileged access to renewable energy technologies to help them fight the effects of a carbon driven economy.”

The World Future Council calls on wealthy countries to live up to their responsibilities and set up an international investment fund that guarantees technology transfer from the Global North to the Global South. To finance this, companies should not merely receive carbon trading certificates, but instead, they should be made to purchase them at auction. This reflects the UNFCCC’s “polluter pays” principle, and is, in effect, compensation for those hardest hit by climate change from those most responsible for it.

Changes in energy policy must not be left to the flexible instrument of the Kyoto protocol. Additional policy actions are needed within individual nations and internationally. We urgently need an International Renewable Energy Agency, as has been proposed by the German government. Another step needed is a global reforestation program to reabsorb CO2 emissions from the atmosphere.

At the Bali convention, the World Future Council, as the voice of future generations, is drawing special attention to the importance of renewable energy as the basis of a totally new energy system for the planet. We need to initiate appropriate legislation worldwide to install carbon-free, decentralized, efficient, renewable and secure energy systems sufficient for all the earth’s people. This switch needs to start immediately. The World Future Council perceives it as a crime against the future if the gap between ‘knowing’ and ‘acting’ in all the related areas of climate change is not overcome immediately.

Bianca Jagger: “According to many scientists, we have less than a decade left to address the issue of climate change before we reach the earth system’s “tipping point”. It is the responsibility of leaders everywhere to fully understand this problem if they are to meet the challenges before us. Failure to act effectively is likely to precipitate cataclysmic changes in the earth system that could obliterate life on earth.”

I was delighted to give a speech entitled In the name of progress and development at Exeter College, Oxford on Wednesday.

The students who came to listen were polite, intelligent, and asked some excellent questions. Here is what they had to say after my visit (original page here):

On Wednesday evening, students at Exeter were lucky enough to meet none other than Bianca Jagger; a pioneer described by Rector Frances Cairncross as ‘an iconic figure who has used her name and her brains for many good causes’.

Bianca’s talk, ‘In the Name of Progress and Development’, was a fascinating and radical overview of poverty, climate change, and the oppression of women — and how the most popular attempts to improve these issues are not always the best.

Some of the most interesting topics to arise from the discussion were the unseen importance of the IMF, the vital need for a post-Kyoto protocol in the G8, and the way in which ‘the EPA has been gutted since George Bush came to power’.

‘We are locked into an ineffecient, pollution-based economy,’ Bianca said. ‘Countries from the global north continue to rape and pillage the countries of the global south’.

She also spoke a great deal about the situation in Iraq, recounting her experiences of being in the country ten days before the invasion. ‘Even the most fervent opponents of Saddam Hussein did not want an invasion,’ she said. ‘We do not bring democracy at gunpoint.’

But behind these matters of international importance was a powerful human story. Bianca told rapt listeners about life under the Nicaraguan Samoza regime, her parents’ break-up when she was barely a teenager, and what it was like to see the oppression of women ‘first-hand’.

In particular, she spoke of her mother’s profound influence on her life. ‘My mother was my role model,’ Bianca said.

The students gathered together at the end of the evening agreed the talk had made them readdress their views. Perhaps when it comes to Make Poverty History, Bono and Geldof are not saving the planet after all.

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