You may be wondering what Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, playing the star-crossed lovers in the movie Casablanca, have to do with climate change? I’m glad you asked. 🙂 It matters.
But first, let me refer once more to the upcoming vote in Switzerland: the referendum on the CO2 Act. The opposition against this important legislation comes from two sides. A kind of unholy alliance between, on the one hand, the populist-conservative forces entangled with myopic business interests, and, on the other hand, a group of activists who oppose the Act for not going far enough. Regarding the first group, I explain in the previous post why their arguments contradict the ideals and traditions that we hold dear. Regarding the second group, it’s a bit trickier. They are wrong to oppose the Act itself, even as at least one of their central arguments is correct. The opposition is unhelpful, because the Act is important progress. It’s limited, but it’s a start. That’s how things get done around here, for better or worse. Sometimes radical is exactly right, but I don’t see how that helps us here. Where the activists are correct is in their criticism that the CO2 Act fails to address indirect emissions (CO2 emissions embodied in imported goods and services). Indirect emissions make up 2/3 of the total in Switzerland. Their omission is not at all trivial and the accusation of hypocrisy not easy to refute. And yet, the Act is needed for Switzerland to meet its goals set out in the Paris accords, even as even those goals are not nearly ambitious enough. Which brings us back to Casablanca.
“We’ll always have Paris,” is Humphrey Bogart’s assurance to Ingrid Bergman. When it comes to climate change, we keep telling ourselves that. We’ll always have Paris. It’s not enough. We actually know this. We know rapid decarbonization of all economies and global value chains is required, but struggle to look at the evidence dispassionately in terms how we might get there. What does the transition look like? Check out the slides or paper for an outline of an alternative and feasible approach.
