in the face of grief and loss. This book could not have been written without those who showed our small family countless acts of kindness. To the five families‐ the Baron, the DiRusso, the Argyros, the Hinksmon and the Steinscheinder families‐who stood up to support our family in the most spontaneous and heartfelt manner, please know we are so grateful. I owe a debt of gratitude for the wisdom and generous counsel provided by Jeremy Temkin and Priya Raghavan whose assistance meant the world. To my friends, some of whom are the god parents of my boys who encouraged me when I was at my saddest, there are simply no words that can convey what your friendship meant so I will list your names in the hope you can understand how much I value you: Sumant Shrivastava, Veronique Lambert, Ambassador Elizabeth Thompson Ambassador Kwabena Osei Danquah, Mahenau Agha, Dr J. John and Laurie John, Nina Aebi, Ram Manikkalingam and Elaine Ashworth. To my dear circle of ‘mom’ friends, too many to list and the best kind of friends for a widowed mother to have, I want to say that I feel blessed to have you all in my corner. Deepest thanks are owed to Prof. Peter Haas who has played a crucial role in guiding my work on climate change. I am also grateful for friends and colleagues – Dr. Leena Srivastava, Judith Enck, Nina Orville, Dave Klassen and Dr Karl Hausker – whose ideas and insights have enlivened my work. Special thanks are owed to my editors at Wiley‐ Andrew Harrison, Rosie Hayden and Frank Weinreich‐ for greenlighting my proposal and shepherding the publishing process. I would be remiss if I did not also thank my kind and patient copy‐editing team at Wiley.
In the end though this book would simply not have been written without the constant love and support from my parents – Elizabeth and Abraham – who have shown me what sacrifice and hard work looks like, and who have raised me to live without prejudice or judgment. This book has been written in memory of my husband and for our sons who have shown me what grace, courage, resilience and grit in the face of adversity and grief looks like. And, finally to the father of my two wonderful boys, I say thank you for giving me the gift of this unscripted, heart‐breaking/heart‐expanding journey. This book honors the legacy of his work at the UN in representing the smallest and most vulnerable countries in the struggle against climate change – a legacy that is owed to his sons.
Their father/my deceased husband – Ambassador John William Ashe – was one of the original negotiators of the first UN resolution calling for the historic 1992 Earth Summit, where the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was open for signature, and at which historic global agreement on sustainable development and environmental issues was first reached. The first of his family to get a college education, John completed a Master of Science in Bioengineering, and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and had dual undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Engineering. In an article entitled, “UN Diplomat Seeks Miracle: Bring Together Rich and Poor”, the New York Times referenced him as ‘one of the most influential diplomats’ at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development stating that: ‘He is chairman of the meeting’s trade and finance committee‐ the man charged with bringing together the rich and poor nations, which are feuding over how to reduce poverty while preserving the environment.’ When he died, I got hand‐written letters of condolence from many of his friends who had worked shoulder to shoulder with him negotiating diverse environmental challenges. One such letter from one of John’s dearest friends summarized him best: ‘He was indeed a great man, so exceptional that in a profession where titles are the norm, almost everyone called him John, not ‘Excellency”, not “Ambassador” – just John. A special and unique human being.’
John’s relevant achievements in promoting the sustainable development concerns of developing countries that comprise the majority voice in the United Nations (UN) are a matter of public record. He served in a leadership position, often as Chairman or Co‐Chairman in more than 40 committees and organizations of the UN. He worked to secure global consensus on a wide range of international negotiations ranging from climate change to persistent organic pollutants. He was the first chair of the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol and also chaired the Climate Convention’s Subsidiary Body on Implementation. He played a leading role as Co‐Chair of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012 and its historic global agreement, “The Future We Want.” As the President of the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly, his efforts were critical in preparing the UN for reform, the introduction of the High‐Level Political Forum, and the preliminary work in reaching consensus on global agreements on Financing for Development as well as the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. For more than two decades at the UN, he made crucial and unprecedented contributions to sustainable development, and to almost every major multilateral environmental process and agreement within the UN system. On June 30, 2016, the UN General Assembly paid tribute to his memory and his accomplishments. And yet, despite his considerable work in the global arena, he was an inherently quiet and gentle man whose greatest gift and accomplishment was being a loving father to his sons. Always remembered and never forgotten are his acts of kindness to many in need, his calm spirit and infectious smile. May his soul, and the souls of countless others who have fought valiantly to make our shared planet a more inclusive place rest in peace.
Notes
1 * IPCC (2022) Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Summary for Policy Makers. Geneva: IPCC. https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg2/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdf
2 The views and opinions expressed in this book are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to any organization or entity.
1 Destroying Lives and Evidenced in Plain Sight: The Intertwined Crises of Climate Change, Lack of Access to Clean Energy and Air Pollution
1.1 Now or Never: The Urgency of Linked Action on Clean Air and Clean Energy in the Struggle Against Climate Change
There is no dearth of scientific and global consensus that anthropogenic or human‐induced climate change poses an existential threat to human life. In 1824, Fourier first discussed why the Earth was warmer than could be explained by solar radiation and raised the issue of heat being trapped in the atmosphere. Tyndall then offered an answer by experimentally demonstrating that greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide (CO2) can effectively absorb infrared radiation – the greenhouse effect. Building on Tyndall’s results, in 1896, Swedish scientist and Nobel Prize winner, Svante Arrhenius produced the first estimate of the sensitivity of global temperatures to increases in CO2. By 1938, Guy Callendar demonstrated that the production of carbon dioxide by the combustion of fossil fuels was responsible for increasing the average temperature on Earth (Weart 2008; Hawkins and Jones 2013; Seidenkrantz 2018; NASA Earth Observatory website 2000). More recently, NASA, which has conducted a historic program of breakthrough research on climate science, has categorically warned that the Earth is trapping an unprecedented amount of heat, resulting in drastically warmer oceans and land temperature, with most of the warming occurring in the past 40 years and the seven most recent years being the warmest, with 2016 and 2020 tied for the warmest year on record (NASA website 2021).
Global scientific and policy consensus around climate change as a definitive and existential challenge is not a recent phenomenon (Haas 1990; Bernard and Semmler 2015). More than 16 years ago, Bill Allen, editor in chief of National Geographic, wrote that he was publishing the first of a three‐part series of stories focused on Antarctica, Alaska and Bangladesh on a topic – global climate change – that he was ‘willing to bet’ would make ‘people angry enough to stop subscribing’, but was doing so because these stories ‘cover subjects that are too important to ignore’ and show ‘the hard truth as scientists see it’. He added that he ‘can live with some cancelled memberships’ but ‘… would have a harder time looking myself in the mirror if I didn’t bring you the biggest story in geography today’ (Allen 2004). Today, that ‘biggest story in geography’ has already devastated, and is anticipated to destroy vulnerable lives spanning the world from Dhal Char, Bangladesh to New Orleans, Louisiana. Deadly forest fires, flash floods and heat waves span the globe, coral reefs are bleached, marine ecosystems