While the event was intended to focus on the climate summit scheduled to take place in Paris next month, the tragedy that occurred there just days prior weighed heavily on the discussion, as Milano Dean Michelle DePass opened the gathering with a moment of silence for the victims of the Paris attacks, and Professor Shagun Mehrotra encouraged participants to consider the events through the broader lens of increasing geopolitical consequences of climate change.
The event’s moderator, Parsons Executive Dean Joel Towers, urged the audience to not allow the attacks in Paris to derail the momentum leading to COP21. “Competing crises have drawn our attention throughout the history of climate change away from the immediacy of the task ahead of us,” Towers said. “We’ve seen a constant redirection towards the immediate realities of the moment, but we seem unable often to focus our urgency on issues that lie ahead of us, such as climate change.” The challenge then is to not lose the importance of the immediate, while at the same time addressing future realities.
Shagun Mehrotra, Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management at Milano and a widely consulted expert in the field of climate change policy, began his presentation with a playful cartoon illustrating the past international climate negotiations leading to COP21. In discussing the challenges ahead, however, the tone became more serious. Given our reliance on fossil fuels, meeting the targets to stay below the 2ºC threshold will not be easy. “Whether we are invested or divested from oil,” Mehrotra said, “everything we touch is oil.”
With the focus on high-level negotiations over carbon emission targets and financing, it can be easy to lose sight of the impact of climate change on everyday lives, particularly those of the most vulnerable. Ambassador Mary Elizabeth Flores Flake, Permanent Representative of Honduras to the United Nations, told of the devastation her country has experienced as a result of extreme weather events. The Global Climate Risk Index named Honduras as the country most impacted by extreme climate events during the 1994-2013 period. These events, such as storms, flooding, landslides, and drought, have had crippling multi-sectoral impacts on Honduras’ economy. As a result, Ambassador Flores Flake said her country is committed to resilience development and climate mitigation, including an ambitious reforestation target of 1 million hectares by 2030.
Perhaps the most unconventional perspective on the panel came from Shay O’Reilly, of Union Theological Seminary’s Center for Earth Ethics. The potential of religion, according to O’Reilly, is its capacity to envision a different world and ignite an imagination that goes beyond technocracy. And that sort of drastic shift is what O’Reilly believes successfully addressing climate change will require—a total transformation of systems of production and consumption, including asking what the economic system is good for, and for whom it is good.
Both Stefan Ali, Esq. of the Ironbound Community Organization and Milano Professor and Associate Director of TEDC Dr. Ana Baptista situated the global climate change issue within the context of local social justice movements. The issues of racial, gender and economic inequality are being exacerbated by climate change, and yet those most impacted often have the least voice in finding solutions. Mobilizing civil society to build centers of opposition and resistance to work towards fair and accountable agreements, in Paris and beyond, is imperative, said Professor Baptista.
Milano Professor Michael Cohen sought to link the global and local aspects of the climate change discussion, saying “think globally, act locally is true now more than ever” as we look for comprehensive strategies at all levels. Cities currently produce around 80 percent of the world’s GDP, and are at the same time the greatest contributors to climate change as well as the sites of the greatest vulnerability. The many scales, interdependencies, and aspects of the issue—national, local, spiritual, political, behavioral, technical—are why this is such an important and also such a difficult issue. “It’s our biggest challenge, maybe that we’ve ever had,” said Cohen. “Do we have the courage to confront the question”?
The Alternative Road to Paris: Examining the UN Climate Summit was held on November 16, 2015 at The New School. The event was co-sponsored by the Tishman Enviroment and Design Center at The New School and the Global Urban Futures Project, as part of the Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy.