Guest essay by Eric Worrall
But even the “mock” classroom climate negotiations can’t agree on a plan.
Climate change: how business school students play their part
Can a mock UN negotiation really prepare masters in management students to help save the world?Amy Bell
With less than an hour to go in a two-day series of climate change negotiations, Adele Grundmann found herself in a deadlock. Her hopes of an agreement for her market mechanism were about to be dashed.The US and Chinese delegations had pushed to include fossil fuels in the sustainable development mechanism. This was non-negotiable for Grundmann, who was representing Canada, as these fuels would then qualify for emissions-trading schemes. Risking everything as the countdown began, she threatened to not sign the agreement.
It may not have been the real UN Conference of Parties, but this live simulation at the University of Cologne was nonetheless emotionally gripping. The two-day conference took place in May as the final part of the Model UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) course run by Cems, the international alliance of business schools. Each student represented a country, non-governmental organisation (NGO) or industry group, and worked together to reach a consensus on how to limit carbon emissions to well below 2C.
…
Now in its 11th year, the UNFCCC programme is designed to prepare masters in management students for the challenge of climate change, teaching them the latest science, policy and the role of business in tackling global warming. “Students come in with a frustration that politics is not ambitious enough when it comes to climate change,” says Johanna Bocklet, who teaches the programme at the University of Cologne. “But when they step into the role of government groups and NGOs they come to understand how complex the negotiations are. We teach them a little realism.”…
Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/d1f7baa4-b2f2-11e9-b2c2-1e116952691a
If the kids think a few days of mock negotiations are difficult, wait until they try actually implementing the “solutions” advocated by climate action proponents like the UNFCCC.
The fact is the greens won. The world was persuaded at least a decade ago to make a genuine effort to replace fossil fuel with renewables.
But the world has not gone green. Renewables have made and continue to make very little impact on global energy production.
The ongoing failure has puzzled and angered climate action advocates, who have invented elaborate big oil conspiracy theories to explain the lack of progress.
But the truth is fossil fuel interests would have won this battle even without climate skeptics and political lobby groups, because it simply isn’t possible to achieve the societal transformation which greens want.
In 2014 top google engineers discovered to their horror there is no viable pathway to replace fossil fuel with renewables, even when they considered fantasy technologies like self erecting wind turbines.
Greens are refusing to accept the inevitability of failure, even Google management can’t bring themselves to accept the findings of their own engineers. The only question is, how much damage will be done and how much money will be wasted, until the world stops listening to greens, and gives up the hopeless quest for renewable nirvana.
“ like self erecting wind turbines. “
A good idea, the UN, its minions, gullible politicians and converts should spend some more time with this self erecting process!
Might learn a lot!
I don’t detect any auto-erectile dysfunction in that crowd, Roger.
Are you kidding?
They all have none at all, in case it publicly appears to cause an increase in CO2 😉
Sharpen the focus,
“Pop Piasa October 28, 2019 at 7:04 pm
I don’t detect any auto-erectile dysfunction in that crowd, Roger” :
https://www.google.com/search?q=IPCC+Rajendra+Pachauri+is+back+again&oq=IPCC+Rajendra+Pachauri+is+back+again+&aqs=chrome.
Heck, the wind turbine factories can’t even operate solely on wind power. 😉
“Framework” is a code word for indoctrination in this instance.
…sometimes I can’t help being Captain Obvious…
I’ve been to quite a few meetings where a framework was described for whatever item they had invented at the time.
The framework always described the bounding limits of what you could do, think, say, and work. Under no circumstances where you ever to think of something outside of that framework. Such things didn’t exist, got it?
You’re description of “Framework” is accurate.
Framework = catechism
“Students come in with a frustration that politics is not ambitious enough when it comes to climate change,”
That’s because they were taught that government regulation is the solution to everything.
I bet they leave still believing that too.
But it does demonstrate that free-market, encouragement, even coercion, aren’t enough. One has to go full social to force the changes needed.
In a free market all the green crap would be dumped straight away as it is more expensive than doing things sensibly.
The frustration comes because nature does not read any playbook they want to deal with. All the political tricks such as a “Green New Deal”, the UNFCCC, or any other political option can’t deal with the fact that what they want simply can’t be done. Doesn’t matter whether its socialist, democratic, republican, communist, totalitarian, monarchy, or whatever. Without the means there cannot be any effective results.
We live “in the universe”, but we can’t control it. Even Archimedes admitted you have to have a long enough lever. Right now we don’t have a lever to do any of the phantasmagorical climate plans. IF there really were a CO2 problem the only present solution is to kill 7-8 billion people. That is a hard sell.
The only other alternative is new generation nuclear reactors, which are anathema to the environmentalists. “Mentalists” is a good descriptor- earth size ideas from football sized brains.
At the 50,000′ level it all sounds so easy and most people are on board. When it gets down to reality/today they understand it’s a pipe dream. The “delete fossil fuels crowd” is fighting a losing battle and the only ones that realize that are considered heretics.
…self erecting wind turbines. @@
https://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations_02.asp
How about “self-stupefying fantasies?”
We older folk recognise madness and lack of logic because we have had an education. The modern generation have been indoctrinated and told what to think rather than how to think. The older generation are aware of failed policies in the past such as socialism and communism. The younger generation have no experience of these disasters and schools neglect to teach the history. Neglect or refuse? More likely the latter because they believe this time it will be different.
At the phrase “self-erecting wind mills” all I could think of was “Boxer has fallen!”.
— What — ? — Shorts — ? — Or the horse in Animal Farm ?
That word has a sexual meaning. Well at least that is a natural function, better than the daft ideas these people have.
I still say that with the level of brain washing that the population has been subject too, only a taste of the real world out there, such as the lights and
industry going out, will force them to wake up.
MJE VK5ELL
The world needs to reread the 1841 book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay. It was a prescient look into what we now call “mass psychology.” Contemporary environmentalism has swept into a mania like the ones described in the book. Not just over fossil fuels, but “organic” this-and-that, “sustainability” and a whole passel of other inane buzzwords.
It’s going to be a long climb out. “Men, it has well been said,” Mackay wrote, “Think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
Another useful reference is Michael Crichton’s 2003 speech/essay, “Environmentalism is a Religion.” He explains how modern activists have reconstituted the Biblical story of a Lost Eden in the form of environmentalist “sins” against Mother Earth from which people struggle to redeem themselves.
Understanding the emotional nature of these titanic debates saves a lot of quibbling over specifics. Windmills don’t have be efficient, or make the world a better place, any more than repeating the Rosary or wearing a hair shirt have to prevent you from repeating the same infractions. They’re only necessary to signal your virtue.
folie a deux, eventually starting folie en masse.
‘ how to limit carbon emissions to well below 2C’
What?
Say what???
Is this person completely clueless with no understanding of what they are trying to say at all?
Or is it the objective now to so completely muddle the language that no one actually understands what you are saying but goes along with the ‘feel good’ group-think/peer pressure/social circle/expected behavior anyway?
At least you can’t be proven wrong if what you say makes no sense to begin with 😉
Agree, that statement is legally more safe than the following Danish actor, who started his own political party with funny statements like this: “I will promise tailwind for all cyclists!”
“statements like this: “I will promise tailwind for all cyclists!”” stems from regatta yacht races –
cruising, take “the wind out of the sails” of climate change deniers, or
Like one windelec steals the thunder from the Windelecs behind.
That word “framework” those bureaucrats have such imaginations…
“Now in its 11th year, the UNFCCC programme is designed to prepare masters in management students for the challenge of climate change, teaching them the latest science, policy and the role of business in tackling global warming.”
The latest climate science? What does that entail? I hope they includes Harde 2019,and Berry 2019 that show human CO2 is only a small part of the increase since the industrial revolution, and the findings of the Connollys that shows no greenhouse effect in our atmosphere. Maybe even some of Christie’s work falsifying the models is in that part of their class work. They should be fully informed of the vanity of the activists position and the utter lack of utility of their proposed policies “in tackling global warming” so they can chose ” between being effective and being truthful”.
One cannot speak about any model UN exercise without referring to the hilarious episode of the sit-com “Community” in which two teams of students from separate community colleges compete to be declared the best model UN panel.
Here’s a clip. Not sure if the full episode is available anywhere online.
Not just indoctrinating — I’m sure large amounts of money are also in their dealings.
From the article: “Greens are refusing to accept the inevitability of failure”
Failure of the plan to eliminate fossil fuels *is* inevitable. It’s failing now, the Greens just can’t see it. They see what they want to see, not what is real. They are living in a dreamworld that could turn into a nightmare if they gain enough political power to implement their Green New Deal or something similiar.
All this and they can’t even show that CO2 does any harm to the Earth or its inhabitants. They are dreaming that up, too.
Give nuclear a chance. Neglected for so long made unpopular by cheap natural gas, may be, with ample care the less favorite child may find its way back to succes.
“limit carbon emissions to well below 2C. Now in its 11th year, the UNFCCC programme is designed to prepare masters in management students for the challenge of climate change, teaching them the latest science, policy and the role of business in tackling global warming”
Re: “teaching them the latest science, policy and the role of business in tackling global warming”
Too bad they won’t be teaching them statistics
they will need some of that to understand the idea of “limit carbon emissions to well below 2C” in terms of the relationship between emissions and the 2C target called “The Carbon Budget”
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/09/21/boondoggle/
Imageforeignpolicy.com:
Democracy Is the Planet’s Biggest Enemy
20 Jul 2019 · Greta Thunberg attends the Youth for Climate march in … primarily because they won’t be around to see the worst of it.
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ACYBGNRaAXaqzUyG6mHYsYrmYqiismLQ9w:1573485858761&q=Green+climate+protest+democracy+is+bad+for+climate&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwieqK7Nu-LlAhUu_CoKHV1kAx4QBSgAegQIChAC&biw=360&bih=518