More and more sobering news on the environmental condition of our planet keeps coming from scientists, from the United Nations’ COP meetings, and from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We are not doing enough to avert catastrophe, and we are not doing what must be done fast enough. Indeed, we never did enough fast enough, a conclusion that comes with the burden of guilt. And now we may be reaching the point where we will never be able to do enough fast enough.
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The Quadra Project – 1.5 Degrees Celsius
The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change, adopted by 196 Parties at COP 21 in Paris, on 12 December 2015. It entered into force on 4 November 2016, with the goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, with an aspirational target of 1.5°C, compared to pre-industrial levels.
At the COP 27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022, only a few countries have updated their required annual carbon cutting emission targets for this year, and the United Nations’ Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has described present efforts as so “woefully inadequate” that we are setting the world on track to “catastrophe”. Indeed, current CO2 emissions are rising at 1- 2% per year rather than going down 5-7% per year. Even under the voluntary “nationally determined contributions” of individual nations, emissions are expected to rise by 2030, in contrast to the nearly 50% reduction needed to keep the temperature rise at 1.5°C. At present emission levels, we are committed to a global temperature increase of 2.8°C by the end of the century.
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The Quadra Project: Humanity’s Choice
Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, said in his introductory comments at the COP 27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022, “Humanity has a choice: either co-operate or perish.”
This is simply because we are one humanity, living on one planet. Whether we recognize it or not, the time for differences is over. All the imagined parts that we thought were separate, are interconnected. Whatever happens in one place has an effect everywhere.
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The Quadra Project: The Law of Concentrated Benefit Over Diffuse Injury
Some ideas are so elegantly simple and they explain so much, so efficiently, that their ingenuity creates an “Aha” moment of insight and satisfaction. The Peter Principle is one of these ideas—people are promoted to their level of incompetence. Another is The Law of Concentrated Benefit Over Diffuse Injury, articulated in 1993 by John Grofman and Egan O’Connor.
Because this law explains how things can turn out so badly when most people are so well-intentioned, its authors call it “humanity’s most harmful law”. If we all want peace, fair democracy, honest markets, healthy food, plentiful resources, abundant wildlife and a clean environment, why do things turn out otherwise?
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The Quadra Project: An Island of Refugees
Islands are not convenient places to live, so why do people choose to settle on them? No single answer will suffice, but some insight can be gleaned from the fact that they are surrounded by water. This separation from elsewhere gives the impression that they are places of refuge for people who are at odds with the world, or when the world is at odds with people.
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