Opinion – Candido Bracher: Canary in the Mine

“On a cold day in March 1942, three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt is in the White House with Henry Arnold, commander of the American air force.” So John Doerr, a recognized investor in start-up companies —Google among them— starts his book “Speed ​​and Scale”, in which he analyzes in detail and with great clarity the various aspects of the climate crisis and outlines an objective plan to its overcoming.

It takes as an example and inspiration the plan that FDR sketched on a paper napkin at that meeting. A three-item plan (keep four threatened territories out of Europe, attack Japan, and liberate France) that gave the American military leadership much-needed clarity.

Doerr’s book has several points in common and some complementarity with Bill Gates’ work, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”

Both authors have experience with new business development and are generally familiar with technology. Both analyze innovative alternatives to eliminate, or drastically reduce, the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (CO2e), in a systematic and didactic way, discussing the existing alternatives, or in development, for each of the main emitting activities. of CO2e, such as energy generation, transport, food, industrial activity and land use.

​Bill Gates and John Doerr also agree on the need to reach zero CO2e emissions by 2050 and believe that the efforts made in the present decade will be decisive for the goal to be achieved. Doerr uses the concept of OKR, Objectives and Key Results as his main tool, listing throughout the book ten overarching objectives and fifty-five key results that point the way forward.

Gates, in turn, adopts the concept of “green premium”, which corresponds to the price difference between a product obtained with CO2e emissions and its “clean” substitute. Throughout the book, he analyzes methods to reduce the green premium in the various activities responsible for global warming.

Reading the books is enriching, not only for allowing a clear view of the causes and an adequate dimensioning of the problem of global warming, but also for convincingly showing the technological feasibility of overcoming it. Although at no time do the authors fail to emphasize the difficulty of the challenge, the reading ends with renewed hopes in the capacity of human ingenuity to face it.

But we are in a hurry and, so far, practically no progress has been made. On the contrary, global emissions continue to rise. A recent New York Times article recounts the heat waves in India in April, when the combination of heat and humidity came very close to producing the “wet bulb” phenomenon, incompatible with human life. The journalist describes that “birds fall dead from the sky”.

A more sensitive person, to whom I reported the news, immediately linked this image with the canaries taken by miners to underground mines, which, when they faint, alert workers to the existence of a gas leak and the need to leave the mine immediately. In our case, it is good to remember, the alternative of abandoning the planet is not available.

The urgency necessary to face the problem exposes, in my view, a gap in the two books cited. Much space is devoted to the description of innovations, their scope and limitations, but little is said about the requirements for these technologies to be developed and effectively adopted on a global scale, an essential factor for the success of the enterprise.

If we think of the world as a chemical dependent one, where the drug is fossil fuels and other processes that emit CO2e, we can say that the authors prescribe an adequate treatment, but do not say how to get the patient to follow it.

As the problem demands a global solution, it also requires a global stimulus. This stimulus would be a global price for CO2e emissions. The authors recognize this need, but do not explore existing proposals or push for their adoption. For Doerr this is just one of the 55 key results, the KR 7.3. Even so, it is thought of as something internal to each country, not worldwide: “Price of Carbon. Set national prices for greenhouse gases, at a minimum of 55 dollars per ton, rising 5% annually”.

Bill Gates, who in the introduction reveals that he thinks more like an engineer than a political scientist, says that “pricing emissions is one of the most important things we can do to eliminate the Green Awards.” But he surrenders to the political difficulties of the enterprise and does not explore the possibilities: “I do not intend to prescribe any solution, but the main objective is to ensure that everyone pays the real cost of their emissions.”

Despite the existence of ingenious proposals for the establishment of a world price for CO2e emissions, there is clearly no political commitment from the main nations of the world for its adoption.

Notable exception is Europe, which leads efforts not only in its own territory, but also seeks to encourage the adoption of restrictive policies on emissions in other countries of the world. The best example of this is the approval of the “Carbon Border Tax”, which will tax exports of products to the European Community, according to the carbon footprint of each of these products, thus preventing countries that do not adopt emission restrictions from having an undue competitive advantage. .

It would be important for Bill Gates and John Doerr, distinguished American citizens, to express in their books a greater indignation at the secondary role, at most, that the US has played in international discussions concerning global warming.

Returning to the opening paragraph of Doerr’s book, it occurs to me that perhaps the most relevant aspect of the meeting he cites is not FDR’s plan written on a paper napkin, but the opening sentence: “three months after Pearl Harbor.”

Let’s hope it doesn’t take an environmental Pearl Harbor for the US to launch decisively into the war against global warming.