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Earth Matters: COP27 talks leave us headed for a catastrophic temperature rise of 2.6-2.7 degrees C [1]
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Date: 2022-12-08
So much of importance happens on the COP conferences’ sidelines and interstices that only the participants are aware of. What the media provides is a barebones assessment of success or failure based on a couple of crucial issues based on a couple of word choices. The COP26 summit in Glasgow last year had what was widely called a “breakthrough” when, for the first time, a “phasedown” of coal was written into the final text of the conference. The term “phase out” was nixed.
This year at COP27 in Sharm al Sheikh, the “breakthrough” was the willingness to begin formal talks for the first time about “loss and damage” payments from richer nations with a record of giant carbon emissions to poorer, vulnerable frontline nations with scarcely any contribution to the total emissions record.
Talks. But no pledges of money yet. Indeed, the COP16 2010 Cancún pledge of a pitifully inadequate $100 billion to the Green Climate Fund for climate mitigation in emerging nations missed its 2020 deadline. Indeed, with a current total from 45 countries of just $8.3 billion, existing contributions are still not even close to being met. So a promise at COP27 to talk about financial pledging for loss and damages? Better than not talking is about all that can be said about that. A success maybe, but a rather naked one.
As for the major failure in Egypt? That would be there being no improvements in national pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Most of the existing pledges are insufficient. And few nations have taken all the actions needed to achieve even those pledges. Scientists tell us this means that we will fail to keep rising temperatures below the 1.5 degree Celsius goal that many most vulnerable nations have been begging for, or below the 2 degree C goal viewed as the maximum allowed to prevent the worst climate impacts. Instead, they say, the world is now on a trajectory to hit 2.6 or 2.7 degrees Celsius, which is widely viewed as catastrophic.
So, COP27 success or failure depends on whom you ask. Some people say the conferences are pointless. Others say they remain essential. There are plenty of divergent views about the matter here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Here is an excerpt from one take on COP conferences in general by Ruth Greenspan Bell, a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars:
The people trying to hammer out solutions to this vexing global challenge are serious individuals who care deeply. Some have spent entire careers moving from venue to venue, making their best efforts to find a pathway toward a safer world. The negotiations are sober and sincere. [...] Carbon emissions might have been worse without this annual attention, but it’s hard to escape that the current pathway is essentially business as usual. What is the return on value of almost 30 years of meetings? We’ve seen record-breaking increases in global average atmospheric carbon dioxide and little progress toward concrete support for poor countries that suffer the most from the climate’s radical changes, though they contributed the least to the destruction. [...] On one side of the ledger, the COP is an annual platform for the countries that stand to lose the most from mounting emissions. For two weeks, at least, they can make their case on a public stage. On the other, the meetings have made those with genuine claims into supplicants. For decades, they brought their case to the streets and the side events. The remedies they propose, like taxing fossil fuel companies’ profits, are out of step with political reality. Their concerns finally became central this year, but the answer they got was, as characterized by David Wallace-Wells, a shell, “vague on all of the important points: who will pay into the fund and how much, who will distribute that money and to whom.”
Despite all blah blah blah about the urgency of dealing with the climate crisis, the worldwide fossil fuel industry has big plans for expansion, and governments, including the Biden administration, are encouraging this. The U.S. is planning a bigger oil and gas expansion than any other country in the world for the period to 2025, according to analysis by Oil Change International. But Australia, Canada, China, and other nations are also looking to expand fossil fuel extraction. Scientists say that getting to “net zero” by 2050 requires reducing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide 43%-45% by 2030. But a U.N. report released in late October just before the COP27 confab began concludes current global commitments will increase carbon emissions 11% by 2030, compared with 2010 levels.
WEEKLY ECO-VIDEO
x YouTube Video
GREEN TAKES
Rep. A. Donald McEachin (1961-2022)
Rep. Aston Donald McEachin, who had represented Virginia’s 4th congressional district from 2017 died Nov. 28. That unleashed a flood of tributes from congressional colleagues and constituents alike. Environmental advocates were among them. Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen said in a statement:
“We are devastated and shocked by the untimely passing of Rep. McEachin. We have lost an environmental justice and climate champion who deeply understood that the solutions to the myriad of environmental problems we face must be grounded in justice. His loss will not only be felt in his beloved Virginia, but in the frontline communities across the country he fought for in Congress. He will forever be remembered for opening the doors of Congress to communities that had long felt forgotten and unwelcome. He was their tenacious champion, hero, and friend. “He understood that the right to clean air, clean water, and a healthy and livable planet were the greatest legacy one could leave for future generations. His memory now lives on in the hearts of those he helped as well as his landmark Environmental Justice For All Act that was crafted through his direct engagement with the people and communities most overburdened by environmental injustices. Our thoughts are with his family and staff during this difficult time. In Rep. McEachin’s name, we will fight to make sure that the world he wanted for all of us becomes a reality.” ANIMAL Agriculture workers Have Few Protections Although some climate activists argue in favor of doing away with major aspects of animal agriculture on the grounds that it pollutes ground and surface waters, wrecks ecosystems, shrinks habitat for wild species, harms Indigenous peoples, and contributes greatly to the climate crisis, it’s unlikely McDonald’s or monoculture farming to feed livestock are going away anytime soon. In the meantime, being pretty much ignored is the health and safety of farmworkers who work with animals. At Civil Eats, Christina Cooke reports on how things are and how they got that way. She starts out with the story of Lázaro Álvarez Andrade. Only in the U.S. from Mexico five months, he was knocked down by a bull he didn’t know had been brought, causing grievous injuries that took two months of bedrest to heal before Andrade could return to work. Not where he’d been hurt back to work. That farmer had fired him because he was no use to him injured. Andrade’s situation was made worse because he spoke no English. But he’s not alone. And, thanks to mostly Republican obstructionism, the body that should be watching out for farmworkers the way it does for other workers—OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—isn’t allowed even to investigate lethal farm accidents unless there are more than 10 hired farmhands not members of the family. And, surprise, surprise, Big Ag has figured out ways to game the system by constructing what is in fact a top down operation under central direction look like a bunch of much smaller, decentralized units that aren’t subject to the OSHA threshold. Of course, OSHA—pushed into existence by a hugely Democratic Congress and signed into law by what today’s Republicans consider the worst RINO of all time, Richard Nixon—is a weak agency. Dedicated professionals without doubt, but underfunded, and weakened at every turn by politicians beholden to business interests. As Cooke points out, given the number of OSHA inspectors on the payroll, visiting every business in the country just once would take 165 years. The total OSHA budget is a paltry $612 million, a pair of F-22s. Obviously more funding is required even if farmworkers are not given the same protections as others. But they should be. As long as society as a whole eats animals and consumes animal products in abundance, we will have animal workers. Like all workers, they deserve full protection no matter how small the operation.
ECO-TWEET
x As we head into a new Congress led by folks ignoring climate science, we must keep calling out fake climate solutions for what they are: a fossil fuel scam that’s killing the planet. We’ll carry on @climatecrisis’ work to make sure real climate action doesn’t fall by the wayside. pic.twitter.com/bgpc49Yg2t — Rep. Jared Huffman (@RepHuffman) December 7, 2022
ECOPINION
Green diplomacy: What if the United States and China cooperated on climate change? by Michael Klare at TomDispatch. So, the first (and perhaps most valuable) outcome of any renewed U.S.-China climate cooperation might simply be to place climate change at the top of the world’s agenda again and provide evidence that the major powers, working together, can successfully tackle the issue. Such an effort might, for instance, start with a Washington-Beijing “climate summit,” presided over by presidents Biden and Xi and attended by high-level delegations from around the world. American and Chinese scientists could offer the latest bad news on the likely future trajectory of global warming, while identifying real-world goals to significantly reduce fossil-fuel use. This might, in turn, lead to the formation of multilateral working groups, hosted by U.S. and Chinese agencies and institutions, to meet regularly and implement the most promising strategies for halting the onrushing disaster. Following the example set by presidents Obama and Xi at COP21 in Paris, Biden and Xi would agree to play a pivotal role in the next Conference of the Parties, COP28, scheduled for December 2023 in the United Arab Emirates.
Climate Progress Is Happening, Just Not Fast Enough by Michael Bloomberg at Bloomberg Green. Many countries have pledged to achieve net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050. If all governments committed to it and kept their promises, the goal adopted in Paris in 2015 of limiting future warming to 1.5 degrees would be within reach. But many big emitters still aren’t on board, and the ones that have made net-zero pledges still aren’t fully aligning policies with promises. Changing that can only happen by enlisting the private sector, a mission that was hardly on the agenda in Paris in 2015 but is now emerging front and center. At COP27, governments were urged “to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets in their national climate plans by the end of 2023, as well as accelerate efforts to phase down unabated coal power and phase out inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies.” That’s critical, but actions are what matter, not words — and actions still fall short.
You can see the rest of this infographic here.
What the media gets wrong about the new world population numbers by Paul R. Ehrlich and Peter Raven at Environmental Health News. The essay The Washington Post’s editorial board recently published downplaying the population disaster is itself a disaster—a misrepresentation of the implications of a global human population that recently reached 8 billion people. To publish an editorial on the population crisis titled, in part, “That’s probably a good thing” gives people license to consume as much as they want, to have as many super-consuming children as they want and simply get on with their day-to-day activities. It offers no hope of finding our way out of the catastrophe, of avoiding the tightly population-related existential threats of climate disruption, biodiversity extermination, toxic chemicals (likely related to the global decline in human sperm count), declines in soil quality, ground water, and other resources and escalating chances for nuclear war. For example, Earth Overshoot Day—the day when humans have used all of the biological resources that Earth regenerates during the entire year—occurred this year on July 28. The last time we lived within the productivity limits of our planet was about 50 years ago, when the global population, at approximately 3.8 billion, was less than half of what it just reached.
GREEN QUOTE
“Vladimir Putin, the most monstrous Russian since Rasputin, has done the world an enormous favor by showing us how foolish we are to rely on energy from countries controlled by criminal gangs and lunatics as the basis of our prosperity. Yes, Putin’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine has sent shockwaves through the global economy and will cause much suffering this winter, but according to the latest report from the IEA, it has also kicked off the most intense expansion of renewable energy in history. In fact, the IEA says the world is to add as much renewable power in the next 5 years as it did in the past 20.” —Steve Hanley
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