Did the 26th UN Conference of the Parties on climate change in Glasgow produce any useful results, other than boosting airline and travel industry profits?
Optimists insist there was a victory because, for the first time after 25 of these negotiations, the final consensus document discussed the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Pessimists are appalled that India insisted on changing the language about phasing out coal by 2050 to “phasing down.” Realists remember that India gets over 70% of its electricity from burning coal – electricity that it uses to make cheap goods for the West. Ultra-realists look at the emissions graphs and think it doesn’t really matter.
There is a promise to cease and desist from “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies,” as opposed, one supposes, to efficient ones.
“In the end, everything becomes a bit of a fantasy,” said Philippe Ciais, a scientist with France’s Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences who tracks emissions based on satellite data. “Because between the world of reporting and the real world of emissions, you start to have large discrepancies.” (Washington Post, November 7, 2021)
Ciais was talking about the new scientific analyses which show that countries are under-reporting their emissions. Even the gloomy and urgent prognosis that nations must begin to cut greenhouse gas emissions now to halve them by 2030 is out of line with the observed data. And that 2030 goal is to keep global warming to 1.5oC by 2050.
Realists contemplate the summer from hell here on the wet coast, with wildfires and deaths from heat stroke. Other places endured almost endless floods and landslides. The warming is now at 1.1oC.
The political rhetoric and promises are even more out of line, considering that only a handful of countries have fulfilled previous promises. As Kai Nagata wrote in the Dogwood Initiative newsletter (Nov. 6, 2021): “…dig beneath the headlines and you realize it’s mostly loopholes, denial, and delay.”
There is a promise to cease and desist from “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies,” as opposed, one supposes, to efficient ones. There is a promise to stop funding new fossil infrastructure in other countries, but not, of course, at home. There was no promise of funding for loss and damage to developing countries for the harm caused by wealthy nations’ emissions. There was aspiration to increase the Adaptation Fund to $100 billion from its current $1 billion.
There were deals to immediately lower methane emissions, which would immediately have a beneficial effect on the climate. Nonetheless, as The Energy Mix reported, “The world is still on course to warm by 2.4°C if all the countries’ promises in Glasgow are kept.”
The other bonus emerging from the global conflab is that climate, forest, water, and justice activists from around the world met face-to-face. Hopefully they had time to build the trust necessary for stronger and stronger social movements, which will do the work the politicians and bureaucrats couldn’t.
