Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The United Nations’ climate confab (COP 29) in Azerbaijan, of all places, will convene less than a week after America’s presidential election. It will be pretty glum gathering if Donald Trump returns to the White House. The jet-setting climate bureaucrats may be putting on a brave face claiming that “global climate action” isn’t dependent on who sits in the White House, but it’s easy to believe that they are already having nightmares. What would Trump’s election do to the global climate agenda?
The United Nations’ climate confab (COP 29) in Azerbaijan, of all places, will convene less than a week after America’s presidential election. It will be pretty glum gathering if Donald Trump returns to the White House. The jet-setting climate bureaucrats may be putting on a brave face claiming that “global climate action” isn’t dependent on who sits in the White House, but it’s easy to believe that they are already having nightmares. What would Trump’s election do to the global climate agenda?
The Heartland Institute’s H. Sterling Burnett, Anthony Watts, Linnea Lueken and Jim Lakely discuss on Episode #127 of The Climate Realism Show.We will also cover the Crazy Climate News of the week. Join us LIVE at 1 p.m. ET on Friday, September 20 and ask your questions of the panel in the chat.
The annual UN junket-fest for climate troughers — called COP 29 — starts the week after the US election. But this year things are running behind schedule as countries sit on their hands.
The oceans are boiling, the clock of doom is five seconds from midnight, and “renewables are cheap”, but if the largest economy in the world loses enthusiasm, so does everyone else. For some reason, the same cannot be said about the second, fourth and fifth largest economies.
The whole world is waiting to see who wins the US Election
The annual UN junket-fest for climate troughers — called COP 29 — starts the week after the US election. But this year things are running behind schedule as countries sit on their hands.
The oceans are boiling, the clock of doom is five seconds from midnight, and “renewables are cheap”, but if the largest economy in the world loses enthusiasm, so does everyone else. For some reason, the same cannot be said about the second, fourth and fifth largest economies.
Paris – The prospect of Donald Trump returning as president is hanging over crucial U.N.-sponsored climate negotiations, with countries “holding back” their positions until they know who sits in the White House.
This year’s negotiations hope to increase money for poorer countries to handle climate change, but some governments have not proposed a concrete dollar figure, wary of committing too soon.
“Everybody is holding back until they know who gets elected,” said Mohamed Adow, a campaigner and head of research group Power Shift Africa.
Unlike most years, it’s two month ahead and the money is not on the table. The wheeling and dealing is not being done:
The months of lead-up sessions to COP29, which is being hosted this year in Azerbaijan, have been painfully slow even by the plodding standards of global climate diplomacy, participants say.
With just two months to go, there still isn’t an agreed definition of “climate finance” let alone how much should be paid, which countries should receive it and how, and who should be on the hook for it.
Some developing countries are demanding north of $1 trillion annually, a 10-fold increase on existing pledges.
If elected, Trump could slash funding for the climate and Ukraine, leaving the EU — which saw swings to the right in elections this year — footing the bill.
The EU are not so much worried that they might have to “foot the bill” — what scares them is that an unleashed United States will outcompete their own sabotaged economies, making them look like losers. That will feed discontent and the rise of horrid far righty parties. (Those extremists that think men are men and fish don’t need wind turbines.)
We can take a tiny spec of comfort in this. It doesn’t mean Trump will win, but it means the Galactic Deep State Blob are still worried that he might. Democracy is not completely dead (yet).
Greg Sheridan explains the Australian situation, but it is the same in any Climate Patsy Land:
if Trump wins, suddenly Albanese’s energy policy will look even more unrealistic, and needlessly costly, than it does now. As it is, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, China, is increasing its fossil fuel use and not significantly reducing emissions. This is true, too, of fast-growing emitters such as India and Indonesia.
If the US at the level of national government turns against the climate action consensus, it will be extremely hard to argue that Australia must suffer vastly greater energy prices in order to keep faith with the allegedly global compact on climate change (which of course is not remotely global).
Just by running for office, Donald Trump is putting the brakes on some of the more flagrant climate payola, at least temporarily. The Swamp Monsters don’t want to look too profligate lest he win, because when the brains, the factories and the profits all leave for The Land of The Free, it will make their own positions look so ridiculous.
PS: Aurora Watch Active –– The Sun let off a large X4.5 flare on Sept 12th which is due to arrive in the next few hours, but the best guess (plus or minus a lot) is 21:00 UTC, which is 7am this morning in Sydney (so no good) and 5am in Perth and 5pm in New York. Hopefully friends in Europe get a nice show, or if it’s later, America too. It is being discussed on SpaceWeatherLive. To get an email or alarm when it arrives, sign up for The Glendale App. Otherwise, keep checking the App screen, EPAM (Low energy Electrons and protons Monitor) or magnetometers for the earliest warnings, which will come from satellites about 1.5 million kilometres away. At best we only get 45 mins to one hour of warning. It’s not much time to drive to a dark park on a hill facing south, or to move the moon out of the way.
Frankly it’s a bit of a scandal we haven’t got any space-drones closer to the sun so we get a few hours planning time. Priorities!
How could this get funnier? Azerbaijan, once described as the nation where it rains oil, has just appointed a state oil company veteran as COP29 President.
Azerbaijan appoint state oil company veteran as Cop29 president
Published on 04/01/2024, 5:19pm
Mukhtar Babayev spent 26 years at Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company Socar, where he tried to limit the company’s environmental damage.
The government of Azerbaijan has appointed its environment minister Mukhtar Babayev to be the president of the Cop29 climate talks in Baku in November.
While Babayev will chair the talks, Azerbaijan’s deputy foreign minister Yalchin Rafiyev will be his lead negotiator, according to the Cop28 presidency.
Babayev spent 26 years at Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company Socar, where he tried to limit the company’s environmental damage, before becoming environment minister in 2018.
One negotiator who met Babayev recently described him as “nice” and “soft” but added “you don’t feel the authority and status like from [Cop28 president] Sultan [Al-Jaber], I don’t feel he is an independent person able to push for phasing out fossil fuels globally”.
Rafiyev is a newcomer to climate diplomacy. He did not attend the Cop26 or Cop27 climate talks and his active X (formerly known as Twitter) account has only mentioned climate change once in over six years.
My first thought this has to be a joke to annoy environmentalists, but the UN unhabitat.org website confirms the location of the next climate conference;
Obviously it would be unfair to let the UAE get all the oil and gas sales action, it was inevitable another major petro-industry player would want a chance to sell their product to climate delegates.
I predicted Saudi Arabia would be the next venue, but the Persian Gulf is a little unsettled right now – Yemen based Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for burning an oil depot in Jeddah in 2022, apparently as part of Saudi’s ongoing proxy war with Iran, so maybe Azerbaijan was seen as a more settled venue.
Having said that Azerbaijan’s geopolitical situation is not entirely settled. Azerbaijan fought and won a significant battle against Armenia in 2020, which ended with a significant border shift in Azerbaijan’s favour, and Russian peacekeepers stationed in the disputed border region. There were continued clashes as recently as 2022, so international arms dealers might also be interested in attending the climate conference. It is likely Armenian delegates will want to attend the conference, so the COP29 floor show could be particularly entertaining this year.
The only question, how will COP29 organisers convince small nations delegates to sign the deal? Surely they won’t fall for the same trick twice?
Correction (EW): John Hultquist points out Azerbaijan seized control of ethnic Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, leading to the ethnic Armenian population fleeing the affected region, so the area is hotter than I thought. Perhaps COP29 will be the “Lord of War” international arms dealer climate conference rather than another COP28 style petro-deal climate conference. I wonder if delegates will remember to put in an appearance at the climate sessions?
John Kerry tilts at reality like Don Quixote tilted at windmills. While the 28th UN-related Conference of Parties (COP 28) was wrapping up in Dubai, America’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate fumed about funding and building new coal-fired electricity generating plants. He declared himself a “militant” opponent of coal. He very personally decried those who would build a new coal plant.
John Kerry tilts at reality like Don Quixote tilted at windmills. While the 28th UN-related Conference of Parties (COP 28) was wrapping up in Dubai, America’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate fumed about funding and building new coal-fired electricity generating plants. He declared himself a “militant” opponent of coal. He very personally decried those who would build a new coal plant.
Yet he knows full well that China has funded and built over a hundred coal-fired plants in the past year alone and is building a staggering 234 gigawatts of coal-fired generation. Each gigawatt of generation is equivalent to a new 1000 megawatt coal plant.
Those mind-boggling numbers and the respective increase in emissions of CO2 dwarf hard-won CO2 reductions in the U.S. and Europe. China alone is the mega, indeed, giga windmill Kerry is tilting at.
COP 28 was hosted by the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. The leader of a giant Abu Dhabi-owned oil company was the conference chairman who actually advocated for the importance of fossil fuels in the future of the global economy, stating that “there’s no science to support demands for a phase out of fossil fuels.”
The next host country for COP 29 is another oil-wealth producer, Azerbaijan. The major petro-state producers in the Middle East plus Russia, Algeria, Guyana, Iran, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, and other nations are all looking to expand production for the foreseeable future.
The consuming world is paying them handsomely to do so. They may pay lip-service to a politically and publicly popular climate-change narrative, but given the global economic reality, there is no reason to believe that producers will ever give up their primary wealth creators, oil and gas, and for that matter, coal. Nor will the energy consuming nations, given the symbiosis between producers and consumers.
According to the UN, some 70,000 attended COP 28, with the wealthier, including Mr. Kerry, arriving on their jet-fuel consuming, CO2-creating private jets. The conference was a boon to Dubai’s tourist industry, and a remarkable destination for tourists. But, in the end, the COP 28 final statement incorporates only hortatory language to “transition” away from fossil fuels, not a pledge to “phase-out” fossil fuels.
Hard-core climate activists, led by Kerry, aggressively pursued “phase-out language” but did not get it. That means China, India and developing nations all over the world will continue to burn coal to get their electricity.
The benefit for others
They will continue to need oil and gas to drive their cars, power their economies and use refined derivatives of oil and gas that are part of just about everything produced in the modern world. When John Kerry declares that there should be no coal plants “permitted anywhere in the world,” his words are applied in fact only to the United States, not “anywhere in the world.”
As a result of the COP 28, the big global CO2 emitters will still be able to produce fossil fuel-based wealth, while the Biden administration will continue to try to kill coal — plus oil and gas to a lesser extent (for now) — and thereby undermine America’s industrial and manufacturing sectors and residential ratepayers here at home.
Never mind impending blackouts as coal and gas plants are prematurely “retired” (83 gigawatts worth) resulting from of “green” government regulatory policies and massive taxpayer-funded programs to “go green.” In the Pittsburgh region alone, two coal-fired power plants will be prematurely retired this year because new rules make them uneconomic — rules handed down not from Harrisburg, but from Washington. Rules that pay no attention to how much the area needs that power.
States like Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky are hard hit by the government’s war on coal — a war that doesn’t apply to miners in Russia, Brazil, India and China, to name just a few countries that live off coal.
The U.S. has some 450 years of coal reserves, the world’s largest. Pennsylvania has some of the finest bituminous coal in the world, coal that consuming and developing countries around the world covet. The state still has nearly 5,000 workers employed in the coal industry. And the administration wants to give it all up.
Diminishing the democracies
Coal is the major target now, but Kerry and company are coming for the CO2 emitted from natural gas next. Marcellus Shale, the largest shale formation in the country, providing natural gas and wealth to Pennsylvania and beyond, is at risk if the climate alarmists and regulatory bodies in Washington have their way.
With the still-developing world, led by China and India, rapidly expanding coal-fired power generation in addition to their increasing appetite for oil and natural gas, squeezing America on CO2 emissions simply makes no sense. Such a strategy only diminishes America and Europe, while empowering China, Russia, and the petro-states.
It cripples the world’s democracies while strengthening the authoritarians. And it does nothing to save the environment.
Kenyan agricultural engineer Jusper Machogu told the COP 28 delegates, “we want to flourish, we want to replace the 90 percent of Africa’s energy that comes from burning firewood, cow dung, and crop residue. We want to have the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and synthetic fertilizers, all available thanks to fossil fuels.”
The horde has left Dubai, many in their private jets. Next stop in the champagne and caviar COPcon is Baku, Azerbaijan, which, at 92 feet below sea level, seems an appropriate place to bury Net Zero. The award came on the heels of an historic agreement between Azerbaijan and next-door Armenia, which both nations hope will bring peace to intertwined peoples with a long history of deadly strife.
Azerbaijan, a mostly Muslim nation of 10 million people, straddles Europe and Asia. It relies heavily on oil and gas production, which accounts for nearly half the nation’s GDP and nearly 93 percent of its export revenue. Baku has been an oil center since 1837when tsarist Russians built the first oil-distilling factory nearby.
Prior to the 1905 Russian revolution, Baku produced half the world’s oil sold in international markets. During World War II, Baku supplied 80 percent of the oil for Russia’s eastern front. The nation has rebuilt and expanded its infrastructure since liberation from Soviet rule in 1991.
But while the new Azerbaijani government rebuilt synagogues, it also, in 1990, began a pogrom to expel resident Armenians. Despite this and the recent conquest of ethnic Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region west of Baku, Azerbaijan won the right to host COP 29 when Armenia dropped its bid and supported Baku. The defeated quasi-independent Nagorno-Karabakh government agreed to dissolve as of January 1, 2024.
Meanwhile, the imperialists in Brussels and other European capitals continue to plot their abandonment of the fuels that supply 82 percent of the world’s electricity – a move that would destroy the Azerbaijani economy.
A dozen countries led by the Netherlands have announced crackdowns on what the EU calls “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.” Canada’s climate minister, Steven Guilbeault, says harming oil companies “ensures that spending is aligned with climate ambition.”
Clearly, such planners have not gotten the memo. Or they choose to ignore the wisdom of the Global South (and China, too, for that matter).
As Brendan O’Neill so brilliantly pointed out, “African diplomats said at COP 28 that ‘the idea of a fossil-fuel phaseout [is] unworkable.’” Moreover, he added, “India, China, Brazil, and other nations are not prepared to sacrifice their economic health at the altar of our deranged anti-modernism.”
O’Neill also hits on the real story of COP 28 – that, for perhaps the first time in 28 tries, the clash between Western ideologues “who are exhausted with the modern world” and developing nations “who want in on the modern world” was out in the open for the world to see.
Developing nations spokespeople tended to agree. Nigeria’s environment minister, Ishaq Salako, expressed astonishment at the rhetoric of John Kerry, Al Gore, and others, saying, “Asking Nigeria, or indeed, asking Africa, to phase out fossil fuels is like asking us to stop breathing without life support.”
The G77 coalition of 135 developing nations also made it clear that its members will not stop using coal (and oil and gas, as well), which they see as vital to ensuring what a spokesperson called “a dignified life for our people.”
Kenyan agricultural engineer Jusper Machogu told the COP 28 delegates, “we want to flourish, we want to replace the 90 percent of Africa’s energy that comes from burning firewood, cow dung, and crop residue. We want to have the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and synthetic fertilizers, all available thanks to fossil fuels.”
After 500 years of exploiting Africa’s resources and doing little, if anything, to bring prosperity or even electricity to Africa’s billions, the West now seeks to bully Africans into abandoning a major source of continental wealth – and drive them deeper into debt to install ineffective wind farms and solar arrays. Only Africa (and a few other scattered poor nations) would suffer, as China and India have long since told their would-be superiors to pound sand.
The Institute for Energy Research notes that while nations “officially” agreed to reduce global fossil fuel consumption, oil, gas, and coal still account for about 80 percent of the world’s energy, with production of each hitting new records as world energy demand grows. Even the stodgy British, who proudly abandoned coal years ago, approved a new coal mine shortly after realizing the Russian oil might not be so readily available as an alternative.
Post-pandemic global interest rates, spiked by massive “Net Zero” spending by the Biden Administration and European governments, are adding to the already unaffordable costs of building new renewable energy projects. Cost, along with citizen outrage, is making it increasingly difficult to build new wind farms and solar arrays.
The UN admits that developing countries would need nearly six trillion dollars over the next few years to give up fossil fuels and try to power entire nations on intermittent energy sources – all of which would depend on either debt to mostly European banks or heavy strings attached to government-to-government loans or grants. Yet prior promises of $100 billion have yet to materialize.
[Maybe developing nations also see how Ukraine’s abandonment of its nuclear arsenal left that country vulnerable to Russian aggression.]
Growing backlash in Europe adds to the suspicion that Africans would never see the promised “aid.” At the recent EU leaders’ summit in Brussels, European Council President Charles Michel proposed cutting nearly all of a 10 billion euro fund earmarked for helping European nations build renewable energy projects (wind turbines, hydrogen plants, carbon capture) – a timid enough response to the profligate trillion-dollar boondoggles of the Biden Administration.
The simple truth is that not even the West has enough money to spare to disengage from the engine that fueled the Industrial Revolution. Matt Ridley cites a Climate Change Economicsarticle that admits that achieving Net Zero by 2050 would save about a trillion dollars a year in avoided costs of climate change – at a cost of $10 to $43 trillion a year just to get there. Simply put, every dollar invested in Net Zero brings the West closer to bankruptcy.
O’Neill describes COP 28 as “a war of sorts between Americans and Europeans beholden to the eco-religion and developing nations more interested in growth.” Allison Pearson chastises the eco-religionists who ‘claim that they alone are on the right side of humanity” despite the fact that their project to “save the planet” spells a “painful reduction in comfort and joy for millions” (I would say billions).
Pearson chides the fearmongers who predict a “climate catastrophe” without Net Zero for ignoring the elephant in the room – that we are “certain to have an economic and societal catastrophe if we persist in trying to reach that goal by 2050. Humanity cannot bear it.”
O’Neill condemns the “neocolonial arrogance, its indifference to the needs and rights of people in the developing world” that stands starkly exposed at COP 28 as a vain search for meaning by a generation that so desperately wants to be as relevant as those who brought an end to racial segregation and Apartheid generations ago.
Energy consultant Tilak Doshi called out the “carbon imperialism” of the U.S., the EU, and their developed country allies at COP 26 in Glasgow for daring to dictate a carbonless future energy policy for the developing world. While that arrogance was still in evidence at Dubai, what has changed, he said, “is the pointed responses in opposition by government representatives outside the climate-evangelical Western group of countries intent on weaning the world off fossil fuels.”
Kerry, Gore, and the climate crowd are eagerly anticipating their visit to Baku, where they intend to lay out plans to turn Azerbaijan into a deserted wasteland and quash the hopes and dreams of Africans desperate for affordable electricity and other “modern conveniences.”
Perhaps, though, they should take a cue from the host nation and its historic enemy Armenia, who laid down their weapons to join arm in arm to welcome these glamourous barbarians from the West.
Gro Brundtland, when chairing the world’s first conference on sustainable development, stated that “sustainable” must yield to the higher goal of alleviating poverty, and in the real world, this must include energy poverty. It’s time to abandon climate imperialism – and to set Africa free to chart its own destiny.
That would be good for Africa, even better for the planet and all of its people.
‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’, wrote William Shakespeare. He might have been foreseeing the show recently concluded in Dubai, where over 100,000 people reportedly came to play their roles at COP 28, the 28th major climate policy summit.
‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’, wrote William Shakespeare. He might have been foreseeing the show recently concluded in Dubai, where over 100,000 people reportedly came to play their roles at COP 28, the 28th major climate policy summit.
The centrepiece of the gathering was discussion of the ‘stocktake’ prepared by the United Nations, an assessment of countries’ performance in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in accordance with their five-year plans (‘NDCs’). The final stocktake report served as the decision document. The world’s media declared, with almost one voice, that the conference had produced a ‘historic agreement to transition away from fossil fuels’. Professor Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany declared that the decisions taken at COP 28 marked the true ‘beginning of the end of the fossil fuel-driven world economy’.
In fact, COP 28 was a spectacular failure, as measured against the goals that the UN had set for it from the beginning. It did not achieve a single one of the objectives that climate activists sought. Even more important, in spite of the voluntary commitments that various governments made during the conference (mostly aimed at domestic audiences), it is virtually certain to have little or no effect on the global trends in GHG emissions or on the climate.
The news from the stocktake was bad. The report prepared for the conference estimated that, based on current NDCs, the gap in emissions consistent with limiting warming is about 20.3 billion tonnes (Gt) to 23.9 Gt of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. That is about half the world’s current emissions. The report urged more ‘ambition’ in order to reduce GHG emissions by 43% by 2030 and a further 60% by 2035 compared with 2019 levels and to reach net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 globally.
A new element at the conference was an increased emphasis on phasing out fossil-fuel production and use. The United Nations Environmental Programme published a report in which officials urged the conference to add a new set of targets for emissions reduction that are fuel-specific. It was anticipated that there would be a prolonged debate about whether the conference would endorse ‘phasing down’ or ‘phasing out’ fossil fuel production and about whether that reference should include the word ‘unabated’.
In fact, only intense lobbying by the European Union and the United States, along with several smaller countries, caused the conference to include in the stocktake decision document a carefully-worded reference. The reference is one of an eight-point list of things that the conference ‘called on the Parties’ voluntarily to make national efforts to do. The specific reference to fossil fuels was to ‘transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050’.
Five things are notable about this reference.
First, the statement of goals is not binding; it is not a legal commitment and there are no penalties if the Parties fail to act on it.
Second, the term ‘transition away’ does not require specific cuts in either fossil fuel use or production.
Third, the reference includes only fossil fuels in energy systems, not, for example, fossil fuel use as feedstocks in petrochemicals production.
Fourth, the reference to a ‘just, orderly and equitable manner’ provides loopholes that will allow the developing countries to argue that the goal does not apply to them and/or that ‘orderly’ excludes hasty action.
Fifth, despite its reference to ‘accelerating action’, there are no specific deadlines. In other words, the statement can be safely ignored unless countries intend to limit fossil fuel production and use anyway.
COP 27 in Egypt focused on the alleged need for more climate aid. COP 28 was expected to continue this effort. Developing countries insisted that the wealthier ones: meet the decade-long commitment to provide at least USD 100 billion per year to the Global Climate Fund to finance mitigation efforts up to 2025; agree to increase funding of climate mitigation up to USD 1.3 trillion per year from 2025 to 2030; double funding for climate adaptation, ideally to at least USD 600 billion per year; and provide large commitments for the ‘Loss and Damages’ fund to assist developing countries when they were affected by severe weather events that they attribute to climate change.
COP 28 failed to deliver on these expectations. The decision document noted that the developed countries did not provide USD100 billion in climate aid per year in 2021. It welcomed pledges made by 31 contributors for the ‘replenishment’ of the Green Climate Fund, resulting in a nominal pledge of USD 12.8 billion to date. That is USD 12.8 billion over a number of years, far from the USD 1.3 trillion per year the developing countries demanded.
It gets worse. The decision document stated that the adaptation finance needs of the developing countries are estimated at USD 215–387 billion annually up until 2030, and that about USD 4.3 trillion per year needs to be invested in clean energy up until 2030, increasing thereafter to USD 5 trillion per year up until 2050, to be able to reach net zero emissions by 2050. The significance of this statement is that without this funding the developing countries may claim that they cannot afford the enormous costs of the emissions reduction measures. As the developing countries now constitute almost 70 per cent (and rising) of global emissions, this means that the net-zero emissions goal by 2050 cannot possibly be met.
The conference did little to ‘operationalize’ the Loss and Damages Fund that was approved in principle at COP 27. The key decisions about the design of this fund will be dealt with in a committee that will report back to COP 29. The UN did elicit voluntary pledges, and the decision document welcomed the pledges made to provide USD 188 million for the Adaptation Fund (i.e. far below the USD 600 billion per year sought) and pledges for USD 792 million for Loss and Damages. These were voluntary commitments, so there was no agreement to make them obligatory.
The failure of the conference to meet the financial demands of the developing countries should have been the main story coming out of it. Instead, the media ignored it. We can expect the show to continue next year at COP 29 in Azerbaijan.
My thanks to Robin Guenier for drawing my attention to the prescient words of Bjorn Lomborg written just five days ago, and predicting with uncanny accuracy the outcome of the latest COP farce:
The spectacle of another annual climate conference is ongoing in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) until Dec. 12. Like Kabuki theater, performative set pieces lead from one to the other: politicians and celebrities arrive by private jets; speakers predict imminent doom; hectoring nongovernmental organizations cast blame; political negotiations become fraught and inevitably go overtime; and finally: the signing of a new agreement that participants hope and pretend will make a difference.
The article from which that quotation has been lifted is well worth a read. Inter alia, it contains three killer paragraphs that go to the heart of the issue, but which are missing from most discussions in the mainstream media of climate change and policies associated with it:
What won’t be acknowledged in the UAE—because it has never been acknowledged at a global climate summit—is the awkward reality that while climate change has real costs, climate policy does, too.
In most public conversations, climate change costs are vastly exaggerated. Just consider how every heat wave is depicted as an end-of-the-world, cataclysmic killer, while the far greater reductions in deaths from warmer winters pass without being remarked on. Yet the costs of climate policy are bizarrely ignored.
Analyzing the balance between climate and policy costs has been at the heart of the study of climate change economics for more than three decades. Renowned economist William Nordhaus is the only climate change economist recognized with a Nobel prize. His research shows that we should absolutely do something about climate change: Early cuts in fossil fuel emissions are cheap and will reduce the most dangerous temperature rises. But his work also shows that highly ambitious carbon reductions will be a bad deal, with phenomenally high costs and low additional benefits.
That clear-sighted understanding, lacking from the vast majority of policy-makers (and tens of thousands of pointless hangers-on) attending the latest jamboree, sets out very clearly what is wrong with the whole COP process – it is predicated on misguided assumptions, and it fails in its own terms to achieve anything useful. So much for the background and the predictions. How did it actually measure up in practice?
Bang on cue, I would say. The agreement that was finally signed off (at least, this is the latest iteration available) can be found here. It is the usual mish-mash that we have learned to expect – a mixture of background information (known in the trade as “recitals”) and back-slapping mutual self-congratulation; followed by non-binding aspirations. Because they are non-binding, everyone can happily sign up to them, safe in the knowledge that no enforcement procedure exists to punish them when they fail to take it seriously and don’t act on its exhortations. I suppose it’s impossible to persuade almost 200 nation states to agree on anything meaningful, so to that extent it’s difficult to complain about the inevitable fudge. However, this has happened on 27 previous occasions, so one might have thought that an understanding of Realpolitik might have dawned by now. Perhaps it has, but they can’t admit that the whole process is flawed and pointless, so on and on it goes.
It runs to 21 pages and 196 paragraphs and achieves nothing. It “recalls” on 27 occasions what has been agreed to in the past. It “underlines” the critical role of multilateralism and also “the urgent need to address, in a comprehensive and synergetic manner, the interlinked global crises of climate change and biodiversity loss in the broader context of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the vital importance of protecting, conserving, restoring and sustainably using nature and ecosystems for effective and sustainable climate action”. This is stated in a non-ironic way, with no apparent understanding of the often conflicting nature of these goals. It does however realise (another underlining) that the “Parties are not yet collectively on track towards achieving the purpose of the Paris Agreement and its long-term goals”. Another three “underlines” are thrown in for good measure.
There are nine acknowledgments of various kinds, including “that climate change is a common concern of humankind and that Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, the right to health, the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity”. I hope that satisfies the 90,000 hangers-on, though I very much doubt if it satisfies the people whose lives have already been blighted by renewable energy developments and associated activities.
47 paragraphs are devoted to “recognizing” various issues, while five are devoted to “noting” others. A further 19 are “welcomed”, while a further nine are “affirmed” or “re-affirmed”. Four more are “underscored” (I’m not sure how that differs from underlining), and “concern”, “serious concern” or even “alarm and serious concern” are expressed on eleven occasions.
A bit of self-congratulation follows, with 19 things being welcomed. Then there follow a couple of “commitments”. This is more like it. I assumed that we were getting to the meat of some real firm and binding clauses, since that’s what committing to something usually means. Silly me. The reality is that the agreement is committing to fudge the issues.
Paragraph 6 “Commits to accelerate action in this critical decade on the basis of the best available science, reflecting equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities in the light of different national circumstances and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty”. It sounds great, but it doesn’t impose an obligation on anyone to do anything. On the contrary, it’s a re-statement of the cop-out clause for the so-called “developing” countries, a definition that has long since ceased to serve a useful purpose, since it includes countries like China and South Korea. I suspect that they are both very happy to see this being included.
Paragraph 153 “Reaffirms its commitment to multilateralism, especially in the light of the progress made under the Paris Agreement and resolves to remain united in the pursuit of efforts to achieve the purpose and long-term goals of the Agreement”. Well, that’s nice, but again, nobody actually has to do anything as a consequence of this “commitment”. The reference to progress made under the Paris Agreement also sits uneasily alongside paragraph 24 (“Notes with significant concern that, despite progress, global greenhouse gas emissions trajectories are not yet in line with the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, and that there is a rapidly narrowing window for raising ambition and implementing existing commitments in order to achieve it”) and paragraph 25 (“Expresses concern that the carbon budget consistent with achieving the Paris Agreement temperature goal is now small and being rapidly depleted and acknowledges that historical cumulative net carbon dioxide emissions already account for about four fifths of the total carbon budget for a 50 per cent probability of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C”). Still, who cares? After all, this waffle is all about throwing a bone to everyone with a bee in his/her bonnet, rather than with achieving anything.
So, why have some people being getting mildly excited? Because of paragraph 28, I suspect:
Further recognizes the need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5 °C pathways and calls on Parties to contribute to the following global efforts, in a nationally determined manner, taking into account the Paris Agreement and their different national circumstances, pathways and approaches: (a) Tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030; (b) Accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power; (c) Accelerating efforts globally towards net zero emission energy systems, utilizing zero- and low-carbon fuels well before or by around mid-century; (d) Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science; (e) Accelerating zero- and low-emission technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors, and low-carbon hydrogen production; (f) Accelerating and substantially reducing non-carbon-dioxide emissions globally, including in particular methane emissions by 2030; (g) Accelerating the reduction of emissions from road transport on a range of pathways, including through development of infrastructure and rapid deployment of zeroand low-emission vehicles; (h) Phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible
OK, so it talks about “Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems”, but it doesn’t oblige anyone to do so. On the contrary, it does nothing more than call on “Parties to contribute to the following global efforts, in a nationally determined manner, taking into account the Paris Agreement and their different national circumstances, pathways and approaches”. This is so weak as to be meaningless. Calling on someone to do something doesn’t mean that they have to do it. Taking into account their different national circumstances is a green light for “developing countries” (as rather generously defined) to ignore it, and even for other countries to seek to argue that their current national circumstances from time to time are so special, problematic, or whatever that they can and should ignore it too. Then there’s paragraph 29:
Recognizes that transitional fuels can play a role in facilitating the energy transition while ensuring energy security
Any energy minister worth his or her salt can use that to claim to be complying with paragraph 28 while doing no more than paying lip service to it. Having said that, they don’t even need paragraph 29 to come to their aid, unless they want the benefit of a diplomatic fig leaf, since paragraph 28 contains no binding commitments and no sanctions for non-compliance.
The agreement even contains 14 “invitations” to various people to do various things. In a document such as this, such language is risible. It’s tantamount to saying they might like to think about it, but they really mustn’t worry if they don’t want to. The same can be said of the 31 references to “encouraging” people to take action – it’s not much stronger than inviting them to do so, and it certainly contains no element of obligation.
There isn’t even any hint of criticism for parties who have failed to comply with things they have previously been asked to do. Rather there is an expression of sincere understanding of the difficulties of doing so. Take paragraph 41:
Notes the capacity challenges of the least developed countries and small island developing States related to preparing and communicating nationally determined contributions.
Given that these are the countries that by and large make the most noise in terms of demanding financial contributions and “carbon” cuts from developed countries, is it really to much too ask that they might make a bit of an effort themselves?
Section C deals with finance, and is interesting, since it recognises the enormous scale of what is being demanded (or should I say urged, encouraged, invited…?). For instance, paragraph 67:
Highlightsthe growing gap between the needs of developing country Parties, in particular those due to the increasing impacts of climate change compounded by difficult macroeconomic circumstances, and the support provided and mobilized for their efforts to implement their nationally determined contributions, highlighting that such needs are currently estimated at USD 5.8–5.9 trillion for the pre-2030 period.
Paragraph 68 “Also highlights that the adaptation finance needs of developing countries are estimated at USD 215–387 billion annually up until 2030, and that about USD 4.3 trillion per year needs to be invested in clean energy up until 2030, increasing thereafter to USD 5 trillion per year up until 2050, to be able to reach net zero emissions by 2050”.
Given the monumental nature of those numbers, I find it strange that paragraph 78 “Welcomes the pledges made by 31 contributors during the second replenishment of the Green Climate Fund, resulting in a nominal pledge of USD 12.833 billion to date, and encourages further pledges and contributions towards the second replenishment of the Fund, welcoming the progression over the previous replenishment”, since in the scheme of things, that is chickenfeed.
Paragraph 158 “Acknowledges the important role and active engagement of non-Party stakeholders, particularly civil society, business, financial institutions, cities and subnational authorities, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, youth and research institutions, in supporting Parties and contributing to the significant collective progress towards the Paris Agreement temperature goal and in addressing and responding to climate change and enhancing ambition, including progress through other relevant intergovernmental processes”. Is that by way of saying thank you to the 90,000 hangers-on for showing up? Or to encourage them to turn up again next year? If so, I suspect the organisers will be in for a disappointment – despite the fact that no doubt the “climate crisis” will be even more incredibly urgent next year, I have a feeling that Azerbaijan as a venue might just attract fewer people than Dubai.
I would have ended by saying “see you all again next year” but, funnily enough, I suspect we won’t.
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