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Lawrence Wollersheim is the Executive Director of Integrative Spirituality. He brings an extensive 30-year background in day-to-day technology and business operations across profit and non-profit sectors to his work at US. Comments on the essay below are deeply appreciated and can be sent to: [email protected]

The dirty secrets behind the new Paris Climate Conference (COP21) agreement they don't want you to know

Lawrence Wollersheim

Strong, smart adults do not want to be fed false hopes, false targets or false facts. They want to know the way things really are so that they can adapt to or effectively manage what actually is there. If you would like to quickly cut through the Paris Climate Conference media spin as well as other greenwashing from the poorly informed concerning the Paris agreement and results, keep reading...

The big Paris results in a nutshell

• They set a target of keeping global warming below 2°C with an honorable mention for 1.5°C
• They set a target of the planet becoming carbon neutral by 2050.
• 200 nations pledged to meet these goals.
• They agreed to come back in five years and review their progress on their pledges.

The really bad news about the Paris Climate Conference results

1. They did not declare a long-overdue international global warming State of Emergency. This would act to powerfully alert and educate the global public as to the seriousness of the escalating global warming challenge as well as facilitate a global mobilization of necessary resources to eliminate the emergency.
2. They set a temperature goal of keeping global warming below 2°C. Current science shows that if we stopped all carbon and methane pollution today, it is already a virtual certainty that the temperature will rise 2.4°C (about 3.7° Fahrenheit), and that a rise as much as 4°C is approaching near certainty. Setting a Paris Conference target for 2°C, which science tells us is already impossible to achieve, makes no sense at all!
3. Setting the goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050 will not work and gifts the fossil fuel industry an additional 35 extra years to get more carbon and methane out of the ground. The real target should have been carbon neutral by 2026! (To preserve a rational and reasonable hope we will not go over any critical climate tipping points into irreversible global warming or extinction-level climate destabilization, we absolutely need to be reducing the global toxic pollution of carbon and methane by 10% every year until 2026.)
4. There is no concrete plan to achieve even the inadequate and inaccurate agreed upon goals of the Paris Climate Conference. At Paris the world needed a concrete plan for the greatest mobilization of resources in human history in order to fully leave fossil fuels behind and move to green energy generation within 10-15 years. Paris failing to have a concrete plan for this amounts to Paris' concrete plan for extending the failures of the previous 20 climate conferences.
5. Paris produced no effective, practical or transparent verification processes to determine if a nation does in fact meet its carbon and methane reduction pledges.
6. Paris produced no penalty or penalty enforcement mechanism of any kind for failure to meet national pledges. Evolution has taught us over millennia that unless individual and national self-interest are regulated by both clear and powerful rewards and penalties, these self-interests become nearly unstoppable powers unto themselves.
7. Instead of requiring every nation to meet again every year to declare their progress and to adjust and adapt their targets as needed (and as is inherently appropriate to the global emergency that we are in), the Conference attendees agreed to come back once every five years. Coming back only once every five years in this escalating global warming emergency is beyond incomprehensible. We have wasted 30 years in 20 previous impotent conferences, with the only result being even more toxic carbon and methane pollution continuing to rise even faster (when measured in parts per million [ppm] in the atmosphere). If we are very, very lucky and we do not cross any critical climate tipping points, we have at best 10 years to get to carbon neutral, and that is just the starting point within the longer-term strategy to resolve global warming and stabilize our climate.
8. The Paris Climate Conference basically left International climate justice vague and up in the air. Developing countries and countries that did not contribute significantly to global warming have no concrete prediction on how much financial help they're going to get, when they will get it, or under what specific conditions and terms. Countries harmed by the toxic carbon and methane pollution of other countries have no clear mechanisms to be compensated for such damage. And leaving the worst to last
9. The Paris Climate Conference goals do not include any specific policies or procedures concerning the known and unknown climate tipping point extreme dangers and risks or how they will be discovered or managed to prevent unexpected global warming temperature surges and related climate destabilization catastrophes.

Big winners at the Paris Conference

The fossil fuel industry. They now have many additional decades to get the rest of their fossil fuels out of the ground and priced so low that switching over to green energy generation will be cost prohibitive and delayed for most of the developing world.

Big losers at the Paris Conference:

You, your family, a stable future and the future of humanity itself. At our peril, the results from the Paris Climate Conference's fake success and progress are now becoming the soon to be popularly accepted false global warming targets and the equally false hopes of the masses. Most individuals and societies unsophisticated in climate science will be lured into uncritically accepting the dangerous false security notion that the Paris Climate Conference results will actually save us and there is actually some responsible adult at the global and national "steering wheel" driving the rapidly accelerating vehicle of escalating global warming away from the climate cliff of irreversible global warming and extinction-level climate destabilization.

These Paris Conference false hopes and targets thus also create a false and dangerous sense of public safety. By doing so they have taken away the most important thing that is needed to deal with the global warming emergency and the massive resource mobilization that also needs to take place. What has been stolen from us by the Paris Climate Conference failure is the appropriate fear and sense of urgency about escalating global warming within the critical masses of the population of every nation.

What should have happened at the Paris Conference

The delegates should have:

1. Declared an International global warming State of Emergency.
2. Stated the critical end-goal for all plans to resolve global warming is to prevent the planet from going into irreversible global warming and crossing ANY critical climate tipping points that would bring about extinction-level climate destabilization. Additionally, delegates should have stated that we have to return to carbon 350 ppm or less in our atmosphere as fast as possible.
3. Agreed to the goal of becoming carbon neutral globally by 2026--not 2050, which is way too late!
4. Agreed to come back every year (not every five years) to review pledge results because of the still escalating emergency.
5. Agreed to a concrete plan that put a price on all global carbon and methane toxic pollution. The most effective current plan is called the Fee and Dividend plan. Without theFee and Dividend plan implemented globally--disincentivizing fossil fuel generation and use and incentivizing green energy generation and use--we will not be able to get to the life-critical 2026 carbon neutral goal.Fee and Dividend would also in part be able to address climate justice issues by providing funds to alleviate climate damage and assist developing nations to transform to green energy generation.
6. Agreed to provide immediate additional funding for a massive increase in research on critical climate tipping points. We already may be at, very close to, or even unconsciously over critical climate tipping points that will rapidly bring us to irreversible global warming and temperature levels in which humanity cannot exist. It is mission critical that we become more certain as to where the critical climate tipping points exist so we can continually modify and adapt our global warming remedial policies and procedures.

In conclusion

Failing to face the facts in any situation might temporarily delay the pain and suffering, but this failure to face things as they are will eventually only make the pain worse and make it last longer.

Make no mistake about this. There will be great pain in resolving this global warming emergency. It will require radical, costly changes and difficult suffering and sacrifice for most of humanity in order to save humanity and future generations. As strong, smart adults it is time to become honest with ourselves and each other about what is ahead and what is necessary to resolve this global emergency.

Unfortunately, there are many well-intended individuals within the global warming education movement who will try to spin the Paris Conference as progress or add some other incremental positive spin. There are also those within the movement who believe that even an unworkable or false hope is far better and more motivating than having an extremely slim hope to sell to their members. Continuing to act on or spread these false or unrealistic hopes and beliefs does a great disservice to the future of the planet and humanity.

We are in a global warming State of Emergency. It is time to get real. It is not global warming "progress" by any definition or measure when you are aiming at avoiding the wrong target and destination or using a vague or nonexistent plan that will, in truth, not keep you from going over the climate cliff before it's too late.

No matter how you spin it, the Paris Climate Conference was false progress that is disguising the actual urgency of what really is needed to be done.

We are not safe! We are not secure! What happened at Paris was not progress toward the correct goal in time to save us.

The greatest single disservice the Paris Climate Conference has done is that it has acted to keep us asleep to the real urgency of the time-critical global warming dangers that we need to face--while ironically acting like it is waking us up to them (but only to a watered down, impotent version of those dangers.) Because of this disservice and the delays it will certainly cause in adopting real global warming targets and solutions, almost all of us will eventually suffer, and many of us or our descendants will die--because too few of us were willing to say the Paris Climate Conference was, to borrow from the noted fable, an emperor with no clothes.

What to do next

Step One: We have a slim chance via a difficult road in front of us to get to carbon neutral by 2026 and hopefully not cross any critical climate tipping points before then. If you want to be part of the solution and help organize the greatest global mobilization of humanity's resources in human history, learn more about the Job One For Humanity Climate Restabilization Plan.

Step Two: Start preparing backup climate emergency recovery supplies for you and your family for escalating global warming and climate destabilization catastrophes that, because of the Paris Climate Conference failure, will increase in scale, frequency and severity.

Step Three: If you're under 50, consider how you can develop an emergency migration plan to get into the northern-most countries before they close their borders to the masses of new "climagees," like Europe is now closing its borders to the massive Middle Eastern refugee migration.

Emulate the global warming well-informed and ultra-wealthy. They are already buying northern lands and setting up escape compounds so they, their families and their massive assets will be safe and won't get caught in the escalating emergency.

Other helpful information

For more information on the false targets, misdirection and incorrect facts presented to the Paris delegates, please click here.This article also goes into the critical climate tipping points that we are ignoring at our peril.

Please note: our organization Job One For Humanity anticipated the Paris Climate Conference failure. In light of not knowing the full scope of that failure until just recently, we are now rapidly updating our Job One For Humanity Climate Restabilization Plan to help compensate for what the Paris Climate Conference failed to do.