A potent force against fossil fuels

The global campaign against fossil fuels got a major boost in New York this week with the appointment of Kumi Naidoo as president of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative.

A remarkable force in global campaigns for human rights and environmental sanity, Naidoo announced his new role during “Climate Week” in the Big Apple. Timed to coincide with the United Nations’ annual General Assembly, the week began with a modest win. 

The UN adopted a Pact for the Future, in which the governments of the world decried “the current slow pace of progress in addressing climate change.” Early drafts of the pact didn’t even address the prime cause of the problem. But the signatories ultimately agreed that accelerating progress means “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”

The bloc of countries pressing to phase out fossil fuels welcomed the statement and called for an international implementation framework. “We’re past time to fight over words,” said Feleti Teo, the prime minister of Tuvalu. “We must urgently come together to shape a concrete sustainable, fossil-free future for all.”

And the new president of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative pledged to make it happen. “There are enough solutions out there in the world to transition away from oil, gas and coal, but that requires countries to stop expanding these projects, and start focusing on clean, safe and fair energy sources,” said Naidoo. 

He brings an extraordinary depth of experience to his new role. Naidoo began organizing anti-apartheid campaigns from a South African township at age 15. Arrested several times and eventually forced into exile, he became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and earned a PhD before returning to South Africa to work with Nelson Mandela’s government. 

Since then, Naidoo has held the top job at both Greenpeace and Amnesty International. He’s a rare type — equally effective with heads-of-state and poverty activists, policy wonks and artists. He has one of those minds that seems almost superhuman — although it was many years ago, I vividly remember an evening spent failing to hold my own through a conversation about the intricacies of Canadian provincial politics. His breadth of empathy is equally impressive and Naidoo has told his own story in the desperately vulnerable, ultimately moving memoir Letters to My Mother: The Making of a Troublemaker.

He says his new job with the fossil fuel treaty is to “bring together world leaders who are committed to protecting what we love and have the courage to take action.”

It didn’t take long. Barely two days later, the previous secretary-general of the United Nations joined up. Ban Ki Moon declared: “The world has come together many times to tackle significant threats — from saving the ozone to phasing out landmines and negotiating a Nuclear Ban Treaty,” he said. “Now, we must do it again, this time for fossil fuels — an industry that fuels the climate crisis, wars, biodiversity loss and air pollution.” 

Then, from the podium of the UN General Assembly, President Wesley Simina announced the Federated States of Micronesia would be the 14th country formally joining the bloc of nations pushing for a treaty on fossil fuels.

Climate Week is one of those moments the full spectrum shows up: Worried scientists and bullish cleantech-types. Glitzy cocktail receptions promoting climate finance and gritty protests outside financial towers.

Outside the UN security cordons, protestors blocked the headquarters of Citigroup, the world’s biggest funder of fossil fuels. Others crashed a New York Times event forcing Vicki Hollub, CEO of Occidental Petroleum to leave the stage amid chants of “ecocide.”

That accusation was backed up (in a different venue and more subdued language) by scientists unveiling the results of a “Planetary Health Check” on each of the nine big planetary systems. 

“The overall diagnostic is that the patient, Planet Earth, is in critical condition,” said Johan Rockström with the Potsdam Institute. “Six of nine Planetary Boundaries are transgressed. Seven… show a trend of increasing pressure so that we will soon see the majority of the Planetary Health Check parameters in the high-risk zone.”

You may know Rockström for his work to identify possible tipping points, alongside other researchers like Tim Lenton from Exeter University. It’s usually an ominous phrase — they’re talking about ones beyond those planetary boundaries. The kind of tipping points we really, really want to avoid. But Lenton showed up at Climate Week with a twist: he’s been working with a team looking for “positive tipping points.” 

When it comes to carbon pollution, the team found several major sectors where fossil fuel replacements can acquire their own “self-propelling” momentum. Positive tipping points in one sector can even start “cascades,” accelerating progress in others as well. And they looked into the most effective way to accelerate the process.

We’ve already crossed one positive tipping point — solar or wind power are already cheaper than new coal or gas power in most of the world. The team is now looking at catalyzing the next one — the point when building new solar with battery storage becomes cheaper than keeping existing coal and gas plants running. And they looked into similar tipping points for cars, heavy duty transportation, and heating.

They found the most effective mechanism is regulatory mandates — laws and regulations that simply require key sectors to make the shift off fossil fuels. Lenton and the team looked at power, heating and transport in 70 countries, including all the big emitters. They compared subsidies, taxes and other policies. In the end, they determined that governments should focus on mandating the phase out of polluting fossil fuels, or the inverse: require industries to increase clean technologies up to full penetration. 

“Mandates are clearly the most effective policy approach – and we call on policymakers worldwide to implement them at speed,” said Lenton. “Failure to do so will have high human and economic costs.”

It’s a bit odd this should be news. When governments successfully tackled lead poisoning or acid rain, when they got serious about the ozone hole or when they crack down on air pollution or water contamination, they don’t dance around the substance in question — they identify the culprit and regulate it. They ban it if necessary. After much moaning, industry innovates and finds solutions.

A new era of strict regulations might sound fanciful at the moment. As does the very notion of global cooperation. But Kumi Naidoo has seen prisoners become presidents and ideas, once derided, become accepted norms. His one big piece of advice: “Pessimism is a luxury we can’t afford.”