Below is evidence of why the dots have not been joined up - globally or politically - between Bill McKibben's global 350.org and the 'Fee and Dividend' proposal from James Hansen, the scientist on whose globally defined scientific work the 350 campaign is based.

First Jim Hansen - and here's a summary of his scientific analysis leading to the argument for 350 ppmv

Below is a talk he gave at TED in early 2012. In this he says [quote]: -

"The tragedy of climate change is that you can solve it."

So what might this solution be?

"We can solve it with a simple honest approach of a gradually rising carbon-fee collected from fossil fuel
companies & distributed to all legal residents on a per capita basis with the Government not keeping a dime."

The slide he used at that point shows that 100% of the money raised is distributed equally,
not to every global citizen, but to every [legal] American Citizen ['legal citizen' - global or US - what's that?]: -

So that's not a global cap. Therefore it is - however simple and honest - by definition not a global solution.

This is a point that Jim Hansen would [or should] know better than anybody alive considering the work he's doing and the views he expresses here at TED: -

Now Bill McKibben

In a recent article in the Rolling Stones he rightly says, 'do the terrifying maths' for his 'maximum permissible' carbon budget of 567 Gt CO2 [or 154 Gt C carbon only].

It seems that while he calls for doing the maths, he not only doesn't do the maths, he rejects it when its done for him in favour of what can only be called 'voodoo-maths' . . . when actually doing the maths is indeed the issue

When he was sent this precisely charted 154 Gt C global carbon-budget in response to his declaration, not only did he reject it, he stated that he preferred the political voodoo of the GDR budget of 267 Gt C with all the probems this has [see below].

This shift makes a significant difference, as the extra 113 Gt C in the GDR budget leads more to 450 PPMV than the 'branded' 350 PPMV that McKibben links to his 'maximum permissible' 154 Gt C budget [see image below].

McKibben's response to the chart above [a carbon-budget weighing his 'maximum permissible 567 GT CO2 [or 154 Gt Carbon only] was to say he prefers Greenhouse Development Rights [GDR] which [a] just happens to advocate an 'emergency carbon budget' almost twice the size of Bill's Emergency Budget of 980 Gt CO2 [or 267 Gt C - see below] with [b] a more than 100% drop in US emissions-entitlement by 2025 [sic]. The reason this is 'Voodoo' is that when asked if they have any support on Capitol Hill, the response is to describe the US Senate as 'useless aliens'. [That's as may be, but the Senate is the caucus that ratifies international policy in the US Governance structure].

In fairness, with 350.org Bill is organizing to 'give-hope-and-a-role' to young people. This must surely be encouraged as anti-tar-sands, anti-fossil-fuel-subsidies and even anti fossil-fuel company campaigns make a lot of sense - and all power to them.

However, in reality Bill seems to have waived any propspect of Inter-Governmental UNFCCC-compliant arrangements at all, let-alone ones aimed at 350 ppmv.

Moreover, to be frank, while Jim Hansen's 'fee-and-dividend' completely contradicts this GDR politics, it isn't exactly a global deal and is hardly the talk of the town in Beijing and Delhi either. And by tying all that reciprocal self-contradiction to GDR voodoo, the whole 'do the maths' show lays itself open to the charge of incompetence, confusion and ridicule.

Well, if that's where they want to be - fine - say so. But if that is we all are being taken, then where are we; what hope is there - other than yet more confusion, chaos and looming conflict . . . ?

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Bill McKibben abandons his budget and one 2* greater with 'Greenhouse Development Rights'

However Bill's 350.org are not only now contradicting themselves on the weight of the budget: -

they are also surely kidding themselves when they are also pushing Greenhouse Development Rights [GDR] with the divisive and completely unworkable position of *negative emissions entitlements* to the US after 2025 - within a carbon-budget that is nearly twice Bill McKibben's stated 'maximum permissible' global carbon-budget.

The GDR report also shows their budget thus: -

there will be negative emissions entitlement to the US after 2025.

Its relevant to know that Tom Athanasiou and Paul Baer of EcoEquity opposed C&C/GCI tooth-and-nail for 10 years after COP-6 in 2000 because the NGOs didn't like C&C and EcoEquity were going to 'improve it' by allegedly making it fairer from a 'Development NGO' perspective.

Initially this was as 'per-capita-plus' and then finally, when their report came out [it took the best part of ten years to generate], C&C was up-braided for being 'not fair enough' because it didn't advocate *negative emissions entitlements for Developed Countries*.

In fact in choosing this approach, they turned the whole thing into a fight indexed to a global personal income threshold of around $10,000 per head [if you were above it, you were liable and if your weren't, you weren't]! This was almost more ridiculous its than the inverse [Neo-Liberalism] and tax collectors must have been licking their lips.

Already from 1994 GCI rejected that dysfuntional monetary numeraire [$] and didn't choose that fight. However the GDR faction chose both [though no-one sensible knows why] and they also chose to attack and misrepresent GCI.

So it was especially interesting to see the recent GDR presentation to UNFCCC AWGLCA-table [from GDR operative Sivan Karth from SEI] a few weeks back, to find that GDR-advocacy has: -

1. dropped all reference to GDR name [why?]
2. dropped all reference to *negative emissions entitlements* to the US by 2025 [why?]
3. put up C&C curves for global budget [since they are attacking it - why?]
4. kept personal income accounts indexed to future responsibility

In other words it was a complete climb-down.

Tom Athanasiou's subsequent explanation for points one and two came in a personal e-mail [25 07 2012] which said: -

"I’m in Japan were I just gave a presentation on equity after Durban. I assure you that I used the term 'Greenhouse Development Rights' a number of times."

[And here's the key point]: -

"There are occasions, however, and the Bonn meeting was one of them, in which we think it’s more useful to make 'meta' points about the structure of the problem."

The UN knows what the problem is and doesn't need to be further patronised by 'experts' who linked their climb-down to circumloquacious 'meta-points'. This is obviously true when in fact what GDR authors put up at the UNFCCC meeting was essentially a weakened and prescriptive C&C-equivalent. Real C&C has been at the UNFCCC for at least 16 years.

Here is the graphic they used in place of the one above.
The graph they actually used is here, effectively a 'weak [and obviously hand-drawn] version C&C'

It is worth noting here that the global carbon-budget in the GDR carbon-budget graphic [the red-line the GDR authors call the "Two Degrees Emergency Pathway"] does not sum between 2010 and 2050 to the weight of 567 Gt CO2 [or 154 Gt C] that Bill McKibben has now declared is the maximum permissible weight of the future carbon-budget. It also waives any atmospheric CO2 calculation, in favour of a somewhat vague statement about 'two degrees'.

The GDR "Emergency Pathway" sums to 836 Gt CO2 [or 236 Gt C]. In other words what's shown weighs over 50% more carbon by 2050 and, since emissions in that year are not at zero, it still has an implied ~100 Gt CO2 to go, approaching [in other words] twice Bill McKibben's 'permitted carbon-budget' of 567 Gt CO2.

However, in a personal email to me Bill McKibben ignored the maths in the graphic GCI sent showing faithfully *his number* as an actual carbon budget and instead stated that he preferred the GDR work, as it was, "the most useful" [!] - this, from the man who said "do the maths", is incomprehensible and a little ingenue.

At the same time the 'GDR-experts' are watering down their message [at least at the UNFCCC at this moment] by taking out the negative entitlements to the US by 2025 and even their *name* [GDR].

So the question is, why are they doing this?

With his preference for making only what he now evasively calls *Meta-Points* at the UNFCCC, what Tom Athanasiou really means is that at that Bonn UNFCCC meeting, if they'd tried to push *negative emissions entitlements to the US* to the international meeting [where the Chinese Government was presenting and the US Government would have been present], they would have been asked to step down for making a very divisive argument that the UN has no way of processing.

Tom Athanasiou and the GDR authors knew this very well and so discreetly dropped the name and *that demand* in advance, 'in favour of making what they now - in fact deceitfully - call *Meta-Points* . . . [transparency this isn't] . . . and the graph they actually used was effectively 'weaker than C&C' which they nonetheless had spent 10 years attacking [They said: - "C&C needed improvement because it was not fair enough!"].

Is the GDR faction now climbing down? - I doubt it. And if so why? Could it be because C&C as an organising principle continues to draw support from sober-minded people? - I doubt it. Could it be because of a realization that divisive ideas generate division - I doubt it as that's exactly what they set out to do. Is it a pique attack from the 'not-invented-here' syndrome - who knows?

However, the relevant question is whether they have ever presented their 'real GDR' to the 'real US Senate', let alone secured support for it there. And that question is steadfastly avoided because they obviously never will get one vote for it there.

C&C did get support there."

GCI Briefing on C&C and the Byrd Hagel Resolution
In June 97, the US Senate passed the Byrd Hagel Resolution [by 95 votes to 0] which stated that: -

“The US should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the UNFCCC of 1992, at negotiations in December 1997, or thereafter, which would mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex I [developed country] Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period.”

C&C is completely consistent with this Senate Resolution, as shown in this image. There is no other first-order way to calculate what the Resolution calls for, except universally uniform limitations or reductions, which is what the whole row had been about. For this reason, GCI offered support to the US and they accepted it.

GCI has consistently argued in favour of *negotiating the rate of convergence* as a way of drawing the two sides together. However, preferring the divisve absurdity of *negative entitlement* as above GDR authors still refuse to represent or even acknowledge this point though C&C has generated a lot of supoport.

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Its true the 'global-problem' has now become 'supra-national' and 'private'. In other words, it is no longer just 'inter-national' and 'public'. None of that is directly the fault of climate change campaigners.

However, how anyone [let-alone Governments] are supposed to organise to achieve global UNFCCC-compliance if we're faced with that ongoing divisiveness and the increasingly irrelevant fights about 'money', no-one knows. And sadly by being unfocused, some climate-campaigning do indirectly help to generate this.