The Award for Best Use of a Pogoism in Climate Change Journalism Goes To...

...Bill McKibben for "we have met the enemy and they is Shell" in Global Warming's Terrifying New Math (Rolling Stone, published online July 19, 2012, coming out in the Aug. 2, 2012, print edition). A really great piece of journalism, hopefully not falling on deaf ears in Washington as the summer brings about one superlative after another (hottest/ dryest/ biggest heatwave/ drought/ wildfire/ etc.).

This is a tweak on the 1970 Pogoism "we have met the enemy and they is us" by Walt Kelly. It is a parody of "We have met the enemy, and they are ours" (authored by U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry after the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813). In 1953 Walt Kelly first parodied this phrase in the Pogo Papers' forward ("A Word to the Fore"): 

...it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

(From Wikiquote)

It was later used on a 1970 Earth Day poster.

After you read what McKibben says -- that we can't control climate change until we put a price on carbon -- it's something of a relief to read Walt Kelly, reminding us of all that makes us human, bad and good. As much as Shell is the enemy, Shell is also a company of people, and we are people. It is just as true, therefore, by my lights, that we are the ones who can make this right-- put a price on carbon and make the fossil-fuel industry as a whole internalize the externality of climate change. Hopefully not after the focusing event that I fear will be required to motivate the people at Shell and ExxonMobil and BP-- the catastrophic flooding of an economic center like lower Manhattan.

The Adaptation Fund commits $50 mill+ to seven projects, but what is it exactly?

A June 29, 2012, press release from the Adaptation Fund just drifted into my inbox. It is committing over 50 million dollars for seven projects. The Adaptation Fund's brief FAQ tells me it issues decisions about funding four times a year. The footer on the press release says:

The Adaptation Fund is a self-standing fund established under the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which receives most of its funding from a two percent share of proceeds of all Certified Emission Reductions issued under the Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism projects. The Fund is designed to finance concrete climate change adaptation projects and programs based on the needs, views and priorities of developing countries. The Global Environment Facility provides secretariat services to the Adaptation Fund and the World Bank serves as its trustee, both on an interim basis.

I confess I still feel in the dark about this fund and how it works. 
Well, poking around a bit more, I realized that I had heard about it as a theoretical funding instrument with terms under negotiation. It was proposed in 2001, but has been issuing grants only since Sept. 2010.

Poking the internet a little, I found a nice break-down of the working parts of the Adaptation Fund, housed on the Climate Funds Update, a really user-friendly site with information on climate change action funding that's updated twice a month, a joint project of Heinrich Böll Stiftung and the Overseas Development Institute.

As with the Adaptation Fund, I can't tell from their site when they actually started functioning. More internet poking.

Aha! A 12-page briefing issued by Heinrich Böll Stiftung, dated May 2012, reporting on the work of the Climate Funds Update, says:  

CFU was launched in 2009 and seeks to monitor 22 dedicated public climate change finance initiatives from the point when donors pledge funding, through to the actual disbursement of climate finance. 

I wish the authors of these helpful sites would be a little more explicit and up front about who they are, what they do, and when they started doing it! In the meantime, adaptation funding mechanism watchers should add the AF and CFU to their bookmarks.