Hark back to COP26, where nearly 200 nations put their names down for a more ambitious climate agenda. Report after report in the year since have shown that even if current benchmarks are met (and thus far they are falling well short), the world is on track for a too-hot temperature hike.
As talks kick off in Egypt today for COP27 — meeting number 27 of the Conference of the Parties to the UN’s environmental treaty, UNFCCC — not enough nations are tracking on target.
COP26 set records for the largest meeting of minds since the treaty came into being three decades ago. Thousands of delegates and 120 world leaders attended, many making promises about emissions reductions, scaling back fossil fuels and halting deforestation. As Crikey reported, COP26 leaned into four big buzzwords: mitigation, adaptation, finance and collaboration.
There were 153 nations (accounting for 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions) that tabled 2030 emissions reduction targets — formally known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). The agreement was that come COP27, all nations would rethink and revamp these targets.
In the interim, countries were given homework to submit a climate action plan to the UN about how to meet commitments. Deadline: September 2022.
Only 22 nations did so. Going into COP26, that bumped up to a total of 24 of 194 nations. Thankfully, Australia was one of them with its 43% emissions reduction by 2030.
Like Australia, nations that pledged to play their part are those doing the polluting. India submitted updated ambitions to cut the dollar value of emissions by 45% come 2030 and install a 50% renewable energy mix by the same date. And yet it’s ploughing ahead with plans to reopen 100 coal mines.
China is another big polluter making significant investments in the transition to a green energy mix.
Then there are nations hamstrung by politics. The United Kingdom put pen to paper with strong pledges after hosting COP26, but its revolving-door politics has weakened its position as a global leader on climate change. New UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak needed convincing to attend COP27.
The US and China are no longer on side in climate change collaboration, and the EU’s green game is contending with Russia.
The change of leadership in Brazil has been hailed as a good news story. During COP26, more than 100 countries (hosting 85% of global forests) agreed to stop cutting down trees by 2030.
Other commitments from COP26 as outlined in the Glasgow Climate Pact was a consensus to cut down on coal and scale down fossil fuel subsidies. This was a first. Fossil fuels contribute around 40% of the globe’s annual CO2 emissions.
The Global Energy Monitor calculated 2400 coal-fired power plants across 79 countries in 2021, with greater capacity under construction at 189 of these. Total global coal capacity did drop by 13% compared to the previous year, with 34 rather than 41 countries building new plants.
The same number of nations — 34 — along with five public finance institutions pledged to cease support of fossil fuels by the end of this year, transferring an estimated $43.5 billion from fossil fuels into renewables. That deadline is fast approaching and most countries and institutions still haven’t publicised these policies.
Outside of fossil fuels, 80 countries put national preparedness plans in place for climate-related risks and pledged record amounts of adaptation finance. Specifically, doubling the dollar value of 2019 contributions to climate to $2 trillion by 2025. At the time, nations were deemed on track to hit the $159 billion climate finance goal by no later than 2023.
Finances and funding, particularly for poorer nations, are set to be a staple of this year’s conference.
It will be inyeresting to see if anyone raises the real problem that is stifling attempts to fix climate change, all the governments and all the politicians there are owned by the fossil fuel companies. If no one even raises the issue it is proof the whole GOP thing is a PR excercise to make it look like they give a rats while carrying on business as usual.
Exactly. And these fossil fuel companies don’t want to be bankrupted by the $trillions loss in necessarily stranded fossil assets which must remain in the ground.
Solution: nationalization of the entire industry, funded by the limitless currency-issuing capacity of central banks, starting with the BIS.
Unfortunately the world will probably need to be staring at the actual loss of the planet before the current monetary orthodoxy is overthrown……
Watch all the blame shifting and financial evasion re assisting poor countries at COP27.
The single biggest contribution to be made towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce world over-population. When I was a kid, there was a hit song called “Three billion people” (or similar). There are now around 9 billion – a trebling in around 50 years! The problem is that billions can’t even feed themselves, but instead depend on donations from the ‘wealthy’ countries. China did at least try to limit its population growth, but what of India? Indonesia? Pakistan? Nigeria? Brazil? These countries are bursting at the seams, and that means more forests destroyed for farmlands. More fossil fuels for their energy needs. More plastic pollution from the Coke bottles they guzzle…So it is timely to do something about climate change, but the world needs to wake up, and address the drivers of what is driving climate change: too many people!
Just so long as the environmental cost is part of the equation – the average Westerner’s lifestyle consumes far more of everything, calories, resources, energy and rawmaterials than a couple of dozen Africans.
The USA with 350M people far exceeds the planetary impact of 1.2B Indians and Australians aren’t far behind though more than a comparable Eurpopoean, northern winters excepted.
ZPG is for dilettantes – what we need is NPG.
Who’s first?
Europe’s “green game” as you call it has been part of the problem. While ostentatiously shouting about its eased generation by wind and solar, Germany has been concealing its increasing dependence on gas – mainly Russian gas – to level out the intermittent power to provide on-demand electricity.
It is a simple fact that intermittent power must be levelled out with backup power generated by fuel. Any fuel. That fuel could have been nonfossil nuclear but the grown-ups of the world have been increasingly committing the kiddies to using gas. Fossil gas. So are the pundits outraged at that betrayal of COP 26 commitments? No, worldwide they are complaining that Russia has been failing to supply copious supplies of fossil gas to an ever-emitting, ever-warming world.
Roger, I know you’re always keen to spruik the nuclear kool-aid, but as a back-up? So we just turn the nuclear chain reaction on and off a few times a day to cope with the morning and afternoon peaks? Really?
Nuclear provides constant, baseload power. It also needs something else to provide dispatchable power for the morning and afternoon peaks. If we’re going to go to the expense of storage, we may as well use renewables, which are much, much cheaper than nuclear.
Peter Schulz questions whether nuclear reactors can respond fast enough to fill in the intermittency of renewables to level it out for on-demand power. Attack class submarine reactors have been doing so for the last 60 years and modern reactors are designed to automatically load-follow. So yes, nuclear can backup (level out) renewable power.
It is the bean counters who run reactors 24/7 at full power (contributing to baseload) because the marginal production cost of the last few watts is negligible compared to alternative fossil-fuelled generators.
Any comparison of hypothetical renewables-plus-storage versus nuclear is overwhelmed by the astronomical cost of grid-scale batteries. (You would have to cost in storage to cover an unusually bad season of weather and then leave energy in store.). Renewables-plus-storage is much more expensive than nuclear.
What axe am I grinding? It is gas! We are blind to the fact that any increase in renewables is accompanied by an increase in natural gas. We should be calling it renewables-plus-gas so that we can see that it is unsustainable and must be replaced in time for the 2050 extinction of gas, along with oil and coal.