Ever since Prometheus provided us with the secret to machines, we never stopped using them. Unfortunately, since the 18th century machines have functioned primarily with fossil fuels, which we now know lead to global warming. Our society as a whole is addicted to carbon. Each American is responsible for an average of 17 tons of C02 emissions per year. If we don't act soon, we will die of an overdose, choked by the disastrous consequences of rising temperatures. According to physicist Jacques Treiner, "humanity is firmly committed to a trajectory that will raise temperatures by 3°C to 5°C." "Indonesia is burning" warned a recent title in the Guardian newspaper, referring to the forests of the archipelago that have spit out more C02 into the atmosphere in just three months than Germany did in one year. California is currently suffering from the worst drought in 500 years. Welcome to the Anthropocene era, the geological epoch that began when human activities started to have a global impact on the earth's eco-system.
Against this background, the COP21 is taking on the air of a conference of last resort, as even the contributions declared in early October will only allow us to limit the temperature increase to 2.7°C between now and the end of the century, instead of the 2°C that was hoped for.
Will we be able to provoke a redemptive bifurcation?
More and more voices are rising up in unison. There's the Pope, who denounced our dependence on fossil fuels in his Laudato Si encyclical. Then there's the Dalai Lama, who shared his alarm over the effects of global warming on the Tibetan plateau. And a group of 100 well known personalities, including Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky, are calling for total "cold turkey," by leaving fossil fuels in the ground.
A planetary near-cacophony that oddly enough resembles certain polyphonies from the Renaissance era: "Heave the cargo overboard, otherwise we're going to sink! There's no hope of salvation. Get help to the main-sheet! All hands to the helm! What a situation! Run, run! Can't you see we're lost?" (Mateo Flecha, 1581)
Let's give credit where credit is due: all eyes are looking to Finance in the search for powerful levers that can upend the economy and send it into a post-carbon era. For a few months now, some investors are no longer supporting coal, which accounts for 65 percent of the reserves of greenhouse gasses of fossil origin according to the NGO Carbon Tracker. At the end of 2014, Société Générale exited the Alpha Coal project, a mining project in Australia that aims to export 30 million tons of coal. In June, the Norwegian pension fund announced its divestment from some 122 companies related to coal. In July, Bank of America announced a plan to increase its investments in the "low carbon" economy, from $50 to $125 billion. To be closely followed.
Indeed, if financiers are liquidating their participation in climate killing activities, it means that they have found other investors to buy their shares. Real progress would be if they don't find a buyer. Not to mention the fact that banks are also being accused of being two-faced. A report from the NGO Bank Track entitled "Banking on Coal 2014" affirms that "2013 was a record year for coal finance, with commercial banks providing more than 88 billion dollars to the main 65 coal companies - over four times the amount provided in 2005."
Shouldn't we instead be looking toward the real and globalized economy to seek the motor that would invert the level of concentration of C02 in the atmosphere? A rate that just set a new record in 2014 of nearly 400 ppm.
Facebook connects over one and one-half billion humans, LinkedIn 400 million. The power of a network grows exponentially with the number of entities it connects. Why not deploy a social network of hundreds of millions of businesses, each of whom has a zero carbon objective, by capitalizing on the links already established by supply chains. Every economic player is connected to the Internet and has at least one client. Foxconn recently promised to build a 400 megawatts solar park by 2018. No doubt Apple, which has targeted carbon neutrality in China and is the principle ordering institution of the Taiwanese giant, was able to convince them. The saying "The client is king" still reigns supreme.
Imagine that professional social networks in the Cloud could authorize client enterprises to easily interconnect with their suppliers and monitor their progress in terms of energy efficiency. One example is GESI and its E-Tasc platform, an initiative that brings together more than 30 telecom leaders like Nokia and Verizon, that chose "mutualization" as a way to strongly exert pressure on the environmental practices of their sub-contractors.
Could the client/supplier couple be a more promising tool for change than the investor/enterprise duo? Hundreds of sustainability experts recently surveyed by SustainAbility and GlobeScan think so. They have ranked "reducing carbon emissions in the supply chain" the 2nd most effective approach for companies to respond to climate change. "Divesting fossil fuels assets/investments" is eighth.
In the Middle Ages, our relationship to nature had already mutated: "The glass-blowing and iron industries destroyed entire forests to activate their ovens and foundries," wrote historian Jean Gimpel. The main challenge of the 21 century will be to find a collective desire to change. If our system is addicted to a source of energy that endangers man, we have to reinvent our ways of thinking, of living, of managing knowledge. "The Anthropocene is an era that must not last, because it is unlivable,"according to French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. According to him, the question is not about being optimistic or pessimistic, but about being combative. There is no other choice. Otherwise, we risk ending up like Prometheus, devoured on his rock.
This post is part of a "What's Working: Low-Carbon Economy" series produced by The Huffington Post, in conjunction with the U.N.'s 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris (Nov. 30-Dec. 11), aka the climate-change conference. The series will put a spotlight on solutions to shifting away from fossil fuels to renewables, and how we can best minimize our output of greenhouse-gas emissions. It is part of HuffPost's What's Working editorial initiative. To view the entire series, visit here.