A few days ago, after a wonderful vacation lull, my wife and I found ourselves waiting on the platform at Paris' dark and dingy Gare du Nord (Station of the North) for a train to the airport. On the walls beyond the tracks hung 42 colored panels featuring mathematical equations. Not for sale, but for your consideration. It is, we learned, an artwork by Liam Gillick and it's been there underground, gathering grime, ever since the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference at which the Paris Climate Accords were signed by almost every country in the world. Great cheers went up, a florid fleur-de-lis of hope and camaraderie between nations bloomed.
These train-track equations, it turns out, are selections from the scientific pursuits of Syukuro Manube, a pioneer in developing computer models for the Earth's climate as it undergoes changes wrought by mankind. In a 1967 paper, Manube and Richard Wetherald presented a model of the interacting atmosphere-ocean-land systems that predicted today's degenerating state of affairs with a remarkable degree of accuracy. Genius graces the walls.
These train-track equations, it turns out, are selections from the scientific pursuits of Syukuro Manube, a pioneer in developing computer models for the Earth's climate as it undergoes changes wrought by mankind. In a 1967 paper, Manube and Richard Wetherald presented a model of the interacting atmosphere-ocean-land systems that predicted today's degenerating state of affairs with a remarkable degree of accuracy. Genius graces the walls.
I don't pretend to understand the math. I don't even understand people who do understand the math. But I do understand dirt, a little bit, as it slowly accumulates on surfaces. The 42 number-strewn billboards, once shiny and new, are now fairly dirty. Getting to filthy they are, four years on from the big climate pact that has yet to produce any reductions in worldwide emissions of CO2 or other greenhouse gases. In fact, we keep adding greater amounts every year. We keep making it worse.
Why? What's wrong with us? It's safe to say that we're screwing up for reasons related to human nature and our path-dependent institutions, but the Paris treaty itself is flawed for being entirely unenforceable. It operates like a team of basketball players who huddle up, stick their hands together in a messy mass and yell "Hustle!" Then the players jog around the court like it's Sunday afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and the coach isn't allowed to take them out of the game.
Time goes by, as Sam sang in Casablanca. Dirt coats the math. And the climate goes haywire according to principles that care not one ripe, juicy fig for politics, economics or the next train to the Charles de Gaulle Airport. Oh well, what was it Rick said to Ilsa at the end of the movie?
We'll always have Paris.
Why? What's wrong with us? It's safe to say that we're screwing up for reasons related to human nature and our path-dependent institutions, but the Paris treaty itself is flawed for being entirely unenforceable. It operates like a team of basketball players who huddle up, stick their hands together in a messy mass and yell "Hustle!" Then the players jog around the court like it's Sunday afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and the coach isn't allowed to take them out of the game.
Time goes by, as Sam sang in Casablanca. Dirt coats the math. And the climate goes haywire according to principles that care not one ripe, juicy fig for politics, economics or the next train to the Charles de Gaulle Airport. Oh well, what was it Rick said to Ilsa at the end of the movie?
We'll always have Paris.
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