I have for decades been assuring both colleagues and comrades that the climate negotiations are not a sick joke, that “COP” is not short for “Conference of Polluters,” that the negotiations matter. The argument has become easier to make as more people have come to see the implacable necessity of an international way forward. As imperfect as the COP process is, a world without multilateral climate negotiations would be far worse.
But Fair Shares, Finance, Transformation is notable for the deliberate manner in which it lays out the path forward, the way it names and quantifies the barriers to decarbonization, and its careful, explicit distinction between finance sources that are immediately available—or would be, given political and economic reforms—and more fundamental transformations that will require deeper system change.