Rockefeller – Controlling the Game (29 page)

On June 1, 2015, leading oil and gas companies such BG Group, BP, Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil, and Total sent ta letter to France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Christiana Figueres (UNFCCC, acknowledging climate change as a “critical challenge for our world” and asking governments attending the upcoming Paris Summit to:

1. introduce carbon pricing systems where they do not yet exist at the national or regional level;
   

1. create an international framework that could eventually connect national systems.
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The 2015 GLOBE Summit

During the countdown to the Paris Summit, GLOBE held its annual meeting in Los Angeles on 19–24 July, in close collaboration with UNEP and funding from Global Challenges Foundation, to prepare the agenda for the implementation of the agreement. Attendees included Christiana Figueres, (UNFCC), Laurent Fabius (coming chairman of COP21), and Margot Wallström (Swedish Foreign Minister, former spokesperson for Global Challenges Foundation and candidate as Sweden’s representative in the UN Security Council, to which she was elected on 28 June 2016).

GLOBE had become the UN bureaucracy's instrument for implementing the sustainability agenda from above.

…the Paris Agreement must be a starting point for a profound paradigm shift that will make sustainable development possible and will lead to restructuring our economic models to achieve the decarbonisation of our economies by 2050.
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At this meeting, Anders Wijkman from the Club of Rome, also presented his soon-to-be-published report on circular economy.
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Lovesong to the Earth

Finals were coming up. Now it was time to enlist top music artists. On September 15,
Lovesong to the Earth
premiered – a soundtrack to the battle against climate change and for the radical transformation required.

The climate crisis is near a global tipping point, we hope everyone who hears this anthem takes action to encourage our political leaders to keep our planet safe, by keeping fossil fuels in the ground and moving toward 100 percent renewable energy.
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The goal was to reach out to a new and wider audience with the message that it was time to act for the climate. The listeners were asked to share the song and sign a petition to sway world leaders. Twelve top artists, including Paul McCartney and John Bon Jovi, participated. Organisers were Friends of the Earth and Ted Turner’s UN Foundation. In the background we find organisations such as 350.org, UNEP, and Live Earth.
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All connected to Al Gore’s initiative “Live Earth: Road to Paris”.

AGENDA 2030

September 25, 2015, the UN Summit on Sustainable Development gathered 150 world leaders in New York. Opening speakers were Ban Ki Moon and Pope Francis. Here, the Agenda 2030 framework was adopted, with 17 sustainability goals (SDGs) for completely “transforming our world.”
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The wording of the goals were grand and utopian and included total eradication of poverty and hunger in the world. The world was to be rebuilt from scratch and made fair, inclusive, and healthy for both man and nature. The links (sometimes verbatim) to the 16 “commandments” of the Earth Charter (see Appendix B and C) were obvious.
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The framework applies to
all
nations, requiring each and every one to achieve the same results r
egardless of national or local legislation, traditions, or resources
– no one was to be left behind.

The 17 Goals represent an indivisible tapestry of thinking and action that applies in every community, everywhere in the world. They are universal. (David Nabarro, Agenda 2030 Special Advisor)
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In the media this historic agreement was
hardly mentioned –
despite the fact that is was designed to have a profound impact on the future of humanity, covering virtually every aspect of human activity, which was now to be micromanaged from above.
All attention was focused on the upcoming Paris Summit.

The Paris Terror Attacks

On Friday, November 13, just as Al Gore had started the broadcast of “24 Hours of Reality: The world is watching
”,
terror struck Paris. 153 people were killed in coordinated attacks in six locations in central Paris and in the suburb Saint Denis (including a concert at Bataclan with Eagles of Death Metal and outside the sports stadium Stade de France). The
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL) later claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Al Gore immediately postponed the remaining broadcast, with only Duran Duran having had a chance to play. The eyes of the world and an intense wave of sympathy were now directed at Paris. The world needed to unite against such shocking threats.

The G20 Summit in Antalya

Only two days later, on November 15–16, a G20 meeting was held in Antalya, Turkey with President Tayyip Erdoğan as host. Global terrorism – which was already on the agenda – became the main theme, along with the war in Syria, the refugee crisis, and the climate threat. In his opening speech, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said that 2015 constituted a “watershed year for international cooperation" and praised the willingness to come together to solve humanity's greatest problems.
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Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. We recognize that 2015 is a critical year that requires effective, strong and collective action on climate change and its effects. We reaffirm the 2 [degrees] C goal as stated in the Lima Call for Action. (…)

Agenda 2030, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, sets a transformative, universal and ambitious framework for global development efforts. We are strongly committed to implementing its outcomes to ensure that no one is left behind in our efforts to eradicate poverty and build an inclusive and sustainable future for all. (G20 Leaders’ Communiqué, Antalya Summit, 15–16 November 2015).
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World leaders of the largest economies were now prepared to unite against terrorism and support the implementation of the new sustainability goals and the creation of a global utopia. Every country had to meet its targets. They also pledged allegiance to the climate agenda, with the goal of signing a binding agreement in Paris.

The Global Climate March

On November 28–29, 2015, the Global Climate March was organised by 350.org, with Avaaz and Coalition Climat 21, with a call to keep fossil fuels in the ground and to implement a fair transformation of the energy system to one hundred percent renewable by 2050. Many environmental organisations, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and WWF, joined in. Due to the terrorist attacks in Paris, however, the French government banished demonstrations during the Summit. Instead, Avaaz arranged a symbolic silent protest with 20,000 shoes placed on Place de la Republique.
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Avaaz also organised an illegal poster campaign in central Paris before the Paris meeting with faux
wanted
posters of persons who had expressed varying degrees of climate skepticism; from lobbyists such as Marc Morano (CFACT) and lawyer James Taylor (Heartland Institute) to Fiona Wild (vice-president of BHP Billiton’s Department for Environment and Climate Change) and Danish statistician Bjørn Lomborg, who had not questioned the actual threat, but only how effective and economically justifiable the proposed measures would be in relation to the funds invested.
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Avaaz

Avaaz is a progressive NGO, founded in 2007, that channels public opinion through petitions and public campaigns aimed at world leaders. Anyone can suggest petitions for worthy causes such as human rights, animal rights, and protecting the environment, but main focus has often been climate change action, challenging Monsanto and support for refugees. Avaaz founding president and CEO, Ricken Patel, has previously been involved with the UN, the Rockefeller Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

The Paris Climate Summit

On November 30, 2015, under intense media coverage, COP21 began (almost exactly 200 years after the Treaty of Paris 1815, which marked the end of the Napoleonic wars in Europe). The conference was held at the Le Bourget airport north of Paris, with heavily armed police officers everywhere and airport class security checks even for the public part of the conference. The security had been significantly increased after the terrorist attacks. Expectations were high.
This
time, nothing must go wrong.

In his opening speech, Prince Charles connected the Syrian crisis with climate change, while the otherwise critical Vladimir Putin adhered to the G20 summit communiqué about the climate, arguing that, “climate change has become one of the gravest challenges humanity is facing.”

On December 12, 2015, after lengthy, drawn-out negotiations, the representatives of 196 nations finally signed the Paris Agreement.

The agreement was however, not binding and had many loopholes; necessary concessions in order to get all member states onboard. Johan Rockström and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber viewed it as toothless and, just like a multitude of environmental organisations, wanted to see a full reduction with zero emissions by 2050, even if the target had been tightened to not exceed 1.5°C mean global temperature rise.
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The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
expressed similar dissatisfaction and refused to adjust Doomsday Clock back from “3 minutes to midnight” despite the Paris Agreement and the Iran nuclear agreement in April 2015.

The voluntary pledges made in Paris to limit greenhouse gas emissions are insufficient to the task of averting drastic climate change. These incremental steps must somehow evolve into the fundamental change in world energy systems needed if climate change is to ultimately be arrested. (Sivan Kartha, climate change expert at SEI and member of the Science and Security Board of
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
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Rockefeller Brothers Fund and its chief executive Stephen Heintz, however, saw it as a great victory. Now, efforts to make the agreement tougher could begin. The Fabian strategy continued. Paris was only one sub-goal of many. RBF was ready to finance organisations with the aim of both implementing and strengthening the goals. Governments would be held accountable for living up to their commitments and businesses forced to make necessary changes.
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During the conference, Stephen Heintz and May Boeve from 350.org announced that more than 500 institutions, with $3.4 trillion in assets, had made divestment commitments.
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In an interview in May 2016, Stephen Heintz later stressed RBF's efforts to realise the Paris Agreement and that it “exceeded all their expectations."
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This was obvious, not least through the good contacts with the White House through Chief of Staff John Podesta, and the lobby group Presidential Climate Action Project.

President Obama praised the U.S. leadership in the battle against climate change that had made the deal possible:

Today, the American people can be proud—because this historic agreement is a tribute to American leadership. Over the past seven years, we’ve transformed the United States into the global leader in fighting climate change.
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The President of the Paris Conference, Laurent Fabius, and Christiana Figueres (executive secretary of the UNFCCC) were also pleased. The process of rebuilding the world could now proceed.

This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 – you choose the number. It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation. (Christiana Figueres, 3 February 2015)
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All that was needed now was to anchor the agenda more firmly with individual nations and to ultimately create binding commitments from each country.

Under the direction of Figueres, the UNFCCC had formed a partnership with Rockefeller Foundation to demonstrate the essential role women could play in addressing climate change.
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Christiana Figueres, the daughter of former President of Costa Rica, José Figueres Ferrer, was herself a living example of this.

Before she started working at the UNFCCC, she had been a board member of Winrock International (founded in commemoration of Winthrop Rockefeller in 1985), together with Rockefeller family members Neva Goodwin, Peter O'Neill and David Kaiser.
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Figueres was now aiming higher. On July, 6, 2016, she resigned as head of UNFCCC, to being nominated for the position as the new Secretary General of the United Nations. She felt that it was time for a woman to lead the organisation. She was also a strong believer in Global Governance and thought the UN needed more muscles: