President Biden's April 22/23 Climate Summit (also called "Leaders' Climate Summit"), and Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28

I watched most of the first day of President Biden's April 22/23 Climate Summit, and participated in the Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28. There were some tech glitches in both, but overall I'm glad I watched/attended. 

I respect U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry's visit to China before President Biden's Summit, and I appreciate Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping's attendance where he said "China has committed to move from carbon peak to carbon neutrality [by 2060] in a much shorter time span than what might take many developed countries, and that requires extraordinary hard efforts from China." Hyung-Jin Kim reported April 18 at apnews.com "'For a big country with 1.4 billion people, these goals are not easily delivered,' [Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng] said during an interview with The Associated Press in Beijing. 'Some countries are asking China to achieve the goals earlier. I am afraid this is not very realistic.'" Cooperation was noted in the April 17 "U.S.-China Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis."

U. S. President Biden said at his Summit "the United States sets out on the road to cut greenhouse gases in half — in half by the end of this decade."

These statements are important because it has been widely reported the U. S. is the biggest historical emitter, and China is the current largest emitter on an annual basis. India is third, and Russia is fourth.

India's Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi said "[ . . . . ] we are among the few countries whose NDCs are 2-degree-Celsius compatible [ . . . . ] India’s per capita carbon footprint is 60% lower than the global average. It is because our lifestyle is still rooted in sustainable traditional practices."

President of Russia Vladimir Putin said, through a translator, "Compared to 1990, Russia reduced its greenhouse-gas emissions in a bigger volume than many other countries. These emissions were reduced by half - starting from 3.1 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent to 1.6 billion tonnes. This was the result of a drastic restructuring of the Russian industry and energy sector, conducted over the past 20 years. And as a result, today they constitute low-emission energy sources mentioned in this connection that make up 45 percent of our energy balance, including nuclear generation. [ . . . . ]  In connection to this I will note that in one of our regions - in Sakhalin Oblast - we are working on a carbon pricing and trading system in carbon units. When accomplished, it will result in carbon neutrality of this region already in 2025."

Other highlights of President Biden's Summit, regarding sincerity and delivery, were from Fiji's Attorney-General and Minister for Climate Change Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum (Fiji was not invited as the U. S. claimed the Summit was for the top emitters, but Sayed-Khaiyum was allowed to speak.), and 19-year-old climate activist Xiye Bastida, Mexican-Chilean climate activist, member of the indigenous Mexican Otomi-Toltec Nation, and a lead organizer of Fridays for Future with Greta Thunberg.  

Sayed-Khaiyum said "In 2016, Fiji was struck by the strongest cyclone to ever make landfall in the Southern Hemisphere, Cyclone Winston. It wiped out one third of the value of our GDP in 36 hours [ . . . . ] We are relocating communities, with six already safely on higher ground. More than 40 others must be moved. Our Climate Relocation and Displaced Peoples Trust is designed to harness multilateral support to bring security to these communities [ . . . . ] [E]ven if the global economy became carbon-neutral tomorrow, we would still have to reckon with a range of water-related crises, from super-storms, to the risings seas, to the changing weather patterns that kill-off crops and steal livelihoods of our farmers [ . . . . ]  Today it is Pacific communities on the frontlines of this emergency. Tomorrow it will be New York City, Houston, and Miami. This crisis is shared, as must be our solutions [ . . . . ] "

Xiye Bastida also spoke at the Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28. At President Biden's Climate Summit she said "You need to accept that the era of fossil fuels is over [ . . . .] [M]ost importantly, all of these solutions must be implemented with the voices of frontline black, brown, indigenous communities as leaders and decision-makers. You will often tell us, again and again, that we are being unrealistic and unreasonable, but who is being unrealistic and unreasonable with unambitious, nonbold, so-called solutions? You are the ones creating and finding loopholes in your own legislation, resolutions, policies and agreements.You are the naive ones if you think we can survive this crisis in the current way of living.  You are the pessimists if you don’t believe we have what it takes to change the world."  Regarding her last point, I recall Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research that was a partner of Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28) said May 4th, 2018 in a video no longer available, "It's all about agency, about who could turn this crisis into a solution. [ . . . .] The CEO of Shell once told me 'The climate problem is real but it is completely intractable. You can not solve it. So, let's get rich quick before the world ends, huh?'"

The award for best humor in President Biden's Climate Summit goes to U. K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson: "[ . . . . ] it’s vital for all of us to show that this is not all about some expensive politically correct green act of ‘bunny hugging’ or however you want to put it. Nothing wrong with ‘bunny hugging’ but you know what I’m driving at."

The award for biggest disappointment goes to Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison which is expected given Australia's fossil fuel resources, and ironic since 2019-2020 fires there killed or destroyed habitat for nearly three billion animals. Prime Minister Scott Morrison stuck "to the country’s 2030 target of a 26%-28% cut compared with 2005 levels" as reported by The Guardian's Katharine Murphy and Adam Morton on April 22. 

At day 1 of the Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28, Jason Box, who I worked alongside at Playa in Oregon, said Greenland is losing "10,000 cubic meters of ice per second. So is Greenland lost? Evidently, it is" [Climate.nasa.gov and nature.com note losing Greenland's ice would mean about 23 feet of sea level rise in a thousand years unless, of course, the process speeds much faster than predicted, which seems to be the trend, and ice melt from the bigger problem of Antarctica is added.]. Johan Rockstrom, a top climate scientist at my 2020 post "Updated Best Practices for Climate Crisis," said we are in a "climate emergency" but added "Window for a safe landing is barely open [ . . . . ] I am an optimist due to cooperation [ . . . . ] We can act with speed at scale.'  U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said "Six banks just pledged 4.16 trillion dollars into a renewable economy [ . . . .] 2050 net zero [carbon emissions] is the goal." 

In "Closing Remarks on Day One of [President Biden's] Summit on Climate" Kerry added "As I mentioned earlier, even if we get to net 50 – net zero by 2050, [ . . . ] we still have to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. A lot of people don’t focus on that. And that means we need the innovative technologies to do that, or to be able to know that we can store it and – or turn it into something. We haven’t discovered that yet." His last point sounds eerily similar to Abby Rabinowitz and Amanda Simson's December 10, 2017 Wired article "The Dirty Secret of the World’s Plan to Avert Climate Disaster" in which they noted, "without emissions cuts, global temperatures are projected to rise by 4°C by the end of the century. Many scientists are reluctant to make predictions, but the apocalyptic litany of what a 4°C world could hold includes widespread drought, famine, climate refugees by the millions, civilization-threatening warfare, and a sea level rise that would permanently drown much of New York, Miami, Mumbai, Shanghai, and other coastal cities. [par] But here’s where things get weird. The UN report envisions 116 scenarios in which global temperatures are prevented from rising more than 2°C. In 101 of them, that goal is accomplished by [geoengineering also known as] sucking massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—a concept called 'negative emissions'—chiefly via [ . . . . ] “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” [also known as . . . . ] BECCS. And in these scenarios to prevent planetary disaster, this would need to happen by midcentury, or even as soon as 2020. Like a pharmaceutical warning label, one footnote warned that such 'methods may carry side effects and long-term consequences on a global scale.'" This plan seems like building and deploying a huge net at the bottom of a cliff after many have jumped. You must be smart, fast, and able to do this at scale. 

Day 2 of the Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28, it was great to see actor Bill Murray and actress Frances McDormand in the Greek tragedy Oedipus which I taught for about 25 years. Three points: 1) Many scholars believe the character Oedipus’ tragic flaw is hubris (pride) similar to some modern political leaders; 2) Tiresias' character as the “intuitive introvert” is spoken about in an interview with Carl Jung about how this is a real personality type based on Jung's patients, not just fiction; 3) Two ways to explore Oedipus’ emotional/intuitive blindness vs Tiresias physical blindness/reality vision are to ask students to place Oedipus, Creon, Jocasta, and Tiresias on a scale from strong intuitive power to weak intuitive power and 2) ask student groups to imagine what people a thousand years from now will say about us (if humans survive the climate emergency). Students have  always enjoyed these exercises. The film versions I used were here and here. 

Participants enjoyed an interview with with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. Here is his prayer at the end of a Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1989.

Day 3 of the Noble Prize Summit -- OUR PLANET, OUR FUTURE April 26/27/28 I attended "Roots of Change: Empathy as a Collective Responsibility" hosted by DICCE, GenZGirlGang, and ProjectLets. The session began with a guided meditation followed by "speed friending" to create  a sense of community among the approximately 90 participants.  Next, the excellent moderators Phoebe Omonira, Lyne Odhiambo, and Zoe Jenkins, were supported by speakers Julie Fratantoni, Peggy Mason, Joy Buolamwini, Ed Diener, Gary A. Hoover, and Natalia Kanem. Gary A. Hoover, Executive Director of the Murphy Institute and Professor of Economics at Tulane University, spoke about the problem of looking only at data without meeting those affected. Julie Fratantoni, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Center for BrainHealth, part of the University of Texas at Dallas, suggested activist work requires "healthy boundaries, self-care," teaching the right vocabulary, mindfulness, and showing how empathy can be taught by modeling it for students and others. I could write more about this session, but it is best to let the moderators and speakers show you at a future conference.