It is 28 years since
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change entered into force,
with the simple but fantastically complex ambition of “preventing dangerous
human interference with the climate system”.
اضافة اعلان
Since then, 198 countries have ratified the
convention, and yesterday their representatives gathered at Sharm El Sheikh, in
Egypt, for the 27th Conference of the Parties, or COP27.
With some 30,000 delegates flying in from all over
the world, this will be among the largest climate-change conferences ever
staged. But is there any point?
Last month, the UN Environment Programme published
its 13th Emissions Gap Report. Titled “The closing window”, it was, in effect,
a scream of a wake-up call for every national delegation heading for Egypt.
Whether it will be heard or not will become apparent
over the coming fortnight in Sharm El Sheikh.
“Every year,” wrote UNEP executive director Inger
Andersen in her foreword to the report, “the negative impacts of climate change
become more intense. Every year, they bring more misery and pain to hundreds of
millions of people across the globe. Every year, they become more a problem of
the here and now, as well as a warning of tougher consequences to come.”
The world was, she added, “in a climate emergency”,
and yet “still nations procrastinate”.
At the end of October, a series of fresh reports
confirmed that, despite all the hot air generated by COP after COP, the global
climate crisis continues to get worse. Among the more sobering was the annual
greenhouse gas bulletin from the World Meteorological Organization, which
reported that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous
oxide all reached record levels in 2021, and have continued to rise this year.
There is, of course, the great puzzle of our time —
how to maintain energy supplies while transitioning to renewables. But it is
clear from depressing facts such as these that there is no serious concerted
effort under way to solve it.
Following the Paris Agreement in 2015, in which
nations agreed on the goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees
Celsius above pre-industrial levels, nations submitted Nationally Determined
Contributions (NDCs), detailed commitments on how they planned to do their bit
to help the world hit that goal.
Those NDCs were updated after COP26 in Glasgow and,
after totting up the various pledges, UNEP has concluded that, quite frankly,
they need not have bothered.
The problem is this. In setting out its plans,
almost every country has failed to pull its weight, presumably in the hope of
maintaining economic advantage while other nations step forward to bear a
greater share of the necessary reductions in global emissions.
To stand even the slightest chance of limiting global warming to the ideal 1.5 degrees Celsius increase identified at Paris, annual global greenhouse gas emissions must now be reduced by an astonishing 45 percent in just eight years.
The result, says UNEP, is that there has been only
very limited progress in reducing the “immense ... gap between the emissions
reductions promised and the emissions reductions needed to achieve the
temperature goal of the Paris Agreement” by 2030.
The bottom line is this: To stand even the slightest
chance of limiting global warming to the ideal 1.5 degrees Celsius increase
identified at Paris, annual global greenhouse gas emissions must now be reduced
by an astonishing 45 percent in just eight years.
Think about everything you do that contributes to
greenhouse gas emissions — driving, flying, lighting, heating or cooling your
home, watching television, operating the washing machine, and so on — and
imagine doing 45 percent less of all those things by 2030.
Now imagine the country in which you live doing the
same, reducing all transport, agriculture, energy production by the same
amount.
This is a near-impossible target. And, even if the
world’s wealthy developed nations did start to invest more urgently and
realistically in alternative energy, any emissions reductions they might
achieve are going to be offset by emerging economies that are burning
increasing amounts of fossil fuels as they strive to attain the same advantages
that the West has enjoyed since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
Instead of the 45
percent reduction in emissions now necessary by 2030, even if every nation
delivered fully on its existing NDC pledges, the total reduction in carbon
emissions achievable by 2030 is a pathetic, all-life-on-earth-threatening 3.6
percent.
Clearly, commitment is lacking. At COP26, all 193
national parties to the Paris Agreement agreed to revise and strengthen their
climate plans. The fact that only 24 have done so is, in the masterfully
understated view of Simon Stiell, executive secretary of UN Climate Change,
“disappointing”.
Speaking last week, Stiell added: “We are still
nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on
track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world.”
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that pretty much
every COP since 1994 has been little more than a festival of pledges, an
opportunity for politicians to promise big on the world stage and deliver small
back home.
But for now, and until the conclusion of COP27 on
November 18, Egypt must be given the benefit of the doubt.
This week, in an interview with New Scientist
magazine, Mohamed Nasr, Egypt’s chief climate negotiator, made a pledge of his
own — that COP27 would be different, that it would be a “reality check”,
putting pressure on countries to deliver on existing promises before making new
ones.
We can all only wish him, and Egypt, the best of
luck. If they manage to pull it off, and persuade reluctant nations that
actions speak louder than words, then they will have earned the gratitude of
the world, and of the future generations whose very existence hangs ever more
precariously in the balance.
Jonathan Gornall is a
British journalist, formerly with The Times, who has lived and worked in the
Middle East and is now based in the UK. Twitter: @JonathanGornall. Syndication
Bureau.
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