G8 update: Sarkozy thrilled to see Obama’s pen
Full-scale photo here.
G8 gets off to a brilliant start
The world’s major industrial nations and emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on significant cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, unraveling an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.
As President Obama arrived for three days of meetings with other international leaders, negotiators dropped a proposal that would have committed the world to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by midcentury and industrialized countries to slashing their emissions by 80 percent.
The discussion of climate change was among the top priorities as world leaders gathered here for the annual summit meeting of the Group of 8 powers. The leaders were also grappling with the sagging global economy, development in Africa, turmoil in Iran, nuclear nonproliferation and other issues.
The breakdown on climate change underscored the difficulty in bridging divisions between the most developed countries like the United States and developing nations like China and India. In the end, people close to the talks said, the emerging powers refused to agree to the limits because they wanted industrial countries to commit to midterm goals in 2020 and to follow through on promises of financial and technological help in reducing emissions.
NYC’s climate counter
Deutsche Bank Asset Management, which is one of the leading investors in renewable energy, last month put up a 50 foot electronic counter in Times Square, showing how much greenhouse gases are being put into the atmosphere every second. Here’s a short video of the launch:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vh6I8shvdQ[/youtube]
The Resilience Doctrine
Alex and I have a new article published today by World Politics Review, as part of their special on risk and resilience in a globalized age. The other piece is by John Robb of Global Guerrilla’s fame.
In The Resilience Doctrine (also available in our library here), we argue that globalization is both unstable and inevitable, and that governments have little choice but to build collaborative platforms to manage risk. We conclude with a dozen guidelines for building an international system fit for the 21st century.
- Develop a doctrine with resilience at its heart, using it to create a unified narrative about how to manage the risks the world will face between now and 2030.
- Start with the ultimate objective of building and protecting global systems, cultivating a new constitution for the society of states.
- Create incentives for connecting to the international system and increase penalties for exclusion. Avoid disrupting the global order for short-term gain.
- Focus on function (what systems need to deliver in order to manage risk) over form (the organogram that devotees of international politics obsess over).
- Build the global institutions (rules, norms, markets, organizations, etc.) needed to deliver these functions. Aim for a shared operating system capable of managing each key risk.
- Invest in mechanisms that create, analyze and debate solutions, delivering the shared awareness that underpins successful reform.
- Build shared platforms on which state and non-state actors can work together to re-engineer systems. Sustain them over the long periods needed to battle for systemic change.
- Use open standards to foster interoperability, allowing networks of organizations to work together and achieve elevated rates of innovation and learning.
- Develop a theory of influence tailored to the modern age and use it to bind together all the instruments of international relations (diplomacy, development, military).
- Apply a rigorous principle of subsidiarity, devolving responsibilities to regional, national and local levels where possible, thus maximizing resilience throughout the system.
- Use the opportunity to reform national governments, increasing their openness, while reducing the scope of their mission so that they do less, better.
- Be accountable for outcomes, using shared metrics and external assessors to report publicly on whether resilience is increasing for those risks that will mean most to the future of our civilization.
On the web – the Whiz Kid departs, Af-Pak strategy and more…
– With yesterday’s US-Russian pledge to reduce strategic nuclear arsenals came news of the death of Cold Warrior, Robert S. McNamara, former US defence secretary and later president of the World Bank. Thomas Lippman offers a sympathetic portrait of a man who will be forever remembered for his role in Vietnam. Indeed, The New Yorker asks whether the original Whiz Kid is likely to be the “Ghost of Wars Past, Wars Present, or Wars Yet to Come”.
– Turning to those wars present, Rory Stewart, the former British diplomat turned Harvard academic, offers a critical perspective on current Af-Pak strategy in the current LRB. “Obama and Brown”, he reflects, “rely on a hypnotising policy language”, which “misleads us in several respects simultaneously: minimising differences between cultures, exaggerating our fears, aggrandising our ambitions, inflating a sense of moral obligations and power, and confusing our goals. All these attitudes are aspects of a single worldview and create an almost irresistible illusion”.
– In a similar vein the American military scholar, Andrew Bacevich, laments “the consequences of strategic drift” in current US overseas engagements. “The urgent need”, he suggests, “is for the administration to articulate a concrete set of organizing precepts — not simply cliches — to frame basic U.S. policy going forward”.
– Finally and on a different note, offering a preview of his latest book, Cass Sunstein – of Nudge fame – asks what leads us to hold extreme views. His answer: “group polarisation”.