COP 24 Plenary session (By Doman84 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74855723)
We are now rolling into the second week of this year’s big climate change gathering, COP 24, being held in Katowice, Poland. If you are following the news – and able to detect the reporting beneath the high drama of Brexit – you know that things are a little rocky at the climate negotiations.
While progress has been made on refining the Paris Agreement rulebook (the guidelines for how climate action is implemented, tracked and reviewed), fireworks are likely, as the politicians take over from the technicians in this second week. Their main task will be to fully define and agree the rules. One of the flashpoints is the enduring struggle over climate finance for the developing world. Apart from funding needed for adaptation, there is no clarity yet on the “loss and damage” mechanism that would finance and compensate the losses and damages from climate change that already occur and are irreversible in developing countries.
In a blow to civil society, and yet another blow to our ailing ideals of democracy, twelve climate activists were denied entry into Poland or deported. I was surprised to read that there were only 3,000 people on the Climate Action March held on Saturday – were others deterred by the heavy police presence? Beyond the halls of the COP, more focus is needed on how to manage the social challenges of rapid change, as the gilet jaunes protests in France, which were triggered by a planned rise in an eco-tax on petrol, have shown.
On a Kafkaesque note, negotiators spent several precious hours last week arguing over whether to “welcome” or just to “note” the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 Warming. Which had, after all, been requested by the multinational body of the UNFCCC, under which these very negotiations take place. No surprise that it was four oil producing nations – the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – that wanted to “note” but not “welcome”. And, oh yes, as a final blast of hot air to melt the glacier, the White House hosted a side event on fossil fuels at the COP.
Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. After a few years of hiatus, due to the economic slowdown, emissions reached a record high in 2017, and are going to exceed that in 2018. Far from being on track to keeping the rise in average global temperature to below 2° C or preferably below 1.5° C, as called for by the Paris Agreement, we are currently heading for a 3° C or more rise.
Taken together, the G20 countries are not in line with their commitments under Paris. Even Germany, often seen as a climate leader, will not meet its 2020 emissions targets. Let us not even talk of the antics in Brazil and Australia.
Quite frankly, we need a better idiom than “fiddling while Rome burns”, because this level of inaction and complacency is immensely worse than Nero’s exploits. I agree with Greta Thunberg, 15-year old climate activist of “school strike for climate future” fame, that our “leaders” are behaving like children.
Countries need to drastically raise their levels of ambition. We need to halve current emissions by 2030 to have a chance of limiting warming to 1.5° C – already a dangerous level. COP 24 provides the opportunity to make clear commitments to do this. Will the political people that run our countries be able to grow up enough to do so?