COP26: was it just blah-blah-blah?

The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) was hosted by the UK in Glasgow from 31 October to 13 November. This international summit was seen as crucial to bringing climate change under control. The host, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said the challenge is huge but there are no compelling reasons for procrastination. The goal is to keep warming limited to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 but we are on track for 2.7C, which the UN says would result in "climate catastrophe". 

Around 40,000 people descended on the Scottish city of Glasgow for the two-week event, amidst cries of hypocrisy, as around 400 private jets flew into the country's airports. USA President Biden is estimated to have generated almost 1000 tonnes of CO2 in reaching the conference, his entourage consisting of a fleet of four planes, his Marine One helicopter and a vast motorcade. World leaders were present for only two days, leaving negotiators to deal with business, before flying off home in their jets, President Biden remarking that it was a great mistake that the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, had not been at the event, nor had the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

The perhaps unachievable Paris Agreement goal of net zero by 2050 (posting of 21 July 2019) took a bit of a knock on the first day when Indian prime minister Narendra Modi announced that the Indian target would be 2 decades later, 2070. India has the 3rd largest overall emissions after China and USA.

Not sure what they had to celebrate!
Source: Free Press Journal

The first major deal of the summit was the promise by over 130 world leaders to end and reverse deforestation by 2030. The commitment was supported by nations covering about 90% of the world's forests, including Canada, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia and the DRC. Let's hope this will happen, as analysts have warned that a deal struck in 2014 failed to slow deforestation at all. 

Maybe we should also be wary of the 2nd day agreement between nearly 90 countries who have joined a US and EU-led effort to cut emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane by 30% by 2030. Methane is the major greenhouse gas after CO2 and it breaks down in the atmosphere faster, meaning that cutting its emissions can have a rapid impact on reducing global warming. However, this agreement is only voluntary, and three of the top five methane emitters, China, Russia and India, have not signed up to the pledge.

I also hope that the world will finally honour its agreement, three years behind its original promise, to give $100bn to the developing world to help it absorb the impacts of climate change. Some of this will be used for adaptation including improvements to sea defences and weather forecast systems. We should perhaps be more confident in the pledges from billionaire philanthropists who have vowed to make up any shortfalls.

Research from the University of Melbourne suggests that pledges to limit greenhouse gas emissions could keep world temperature rises to below 2C, but only if the promises were followed through.  What might be needed to force these pledges from governments is action by Greta Thunberg and other young climate activists, who strike fear in politicians; she told an event by the Fridays for Future youth movement near the COP26 campus that politicians were merely pretending to take our future seriously. 

Greta Thunberg in Glasgow
Source: CNN

Speaking at COP26, former US President Barack Obama called on such young people to "stay angry" in the fight against climate change, urging them to apply political pressure to make a change. He said the world is "nowhere near where we need to be" to avoid a future climate catastrophe.

Although Miss Thunberg, and other activists who were out in force in Glasgow, may be naive when it comes to understanding the science (see posting of 14 January 2021) she would probably admit this. She sees her role as keeping the pressure on world leaders, who I fear are also naive regarding the science, into policy decisions and providing funds to those who can provide the technology and engineering skills to build the renewables and electric vehicles of the future. But alas this is where the bottleneck is likely to kick in- do we have the raw materials to produce this green new world? I have seen many activists demonstrating against mining, whereas what is needed is protests against the lack of investment in mining! Environmentalists are often against mining because it is a dirty business, which it can be, but many major mining companies now have net zero carbon targets, with realistic plans to achieve them.

Although the need to ramp up mining of critical metals is crucial, there was little, if any, mention of this at COP26, although coal mining was on everyone's agenda. More than 40 countries signed up to a statement to quit the use of coal and the UK government said that 190 nations and organisations had pledged to stop using it, in the 2030s for major economies and 2040s for the rest of the world. However the final wording of the deal is far weaker than the UK government first claimed, as it has the words "or as soon as possible thereafter" to the 2030s and 2040s deadline.

Some of the world's biggest coal-dependent countries, including Australia, China, India and the USA didn't sign up at all. China now accounts for almost a third of the world's CO2 emissions, burning almost half of the world's coal, with more than 1000 plants supplying 58% of its power. South Africa is also a major emitter of greenhouse gases and sulphur dioxide  as a result of its addiction to coal, and the country is set to receive US$8.5bn to help its reliance on coal, and a move to wind and solar power, in a deal funded by wealthier nations.

Although activists and politicians were demanding replacing fossil fuels, mainly coal, with renewables, there is little appreciation that building renewables, and providing the necessary raw materials requires vast amounts of energy, which, during the transition to all-renewables, will require energy from non-renewable sources. China mines and processes over 85% of the world's rare earth metals, including neodymium, an essential alloying element in the powerful magnets used to generate electricity. Processing of rare earth metals is extremely energy intensive and in China that energy is produced mainly from coal. The great irony is that fossil fuels will be needed for some time in order to phase out fossil fuels!

Nuclear energy is the other option, of course. It is essentially zero-carbon but has been removed as an option by many countries due to the problems of disposing of waste, and reaction to the disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Rather than huge fission reactors, such as that being built at Hinkley Point in UK, there may be a case for small modular reactors, which can be built and put into service relatively quickly. And looking to the future, and 2050, maybe we will be zero carbon if fusion can be made a viable option. The engineering problems are immense, but never underestimate the ingenuity of man in solving apparently insurmountable problems.

The long negotiations ended on Saturday evening, with nearly 200 countries agreeing the Glasgow Climate Pact to keep 1.5C alive and finalise the outstanding elements of the Paris Agreement, but it will only survive if promises are kept and commitments translate into rapid action.

The Glasgow Climate Pact will speed up the pace of climate action. All countries agreed to revisit and strengthen their current emissions targets to 2030, in 2022. This will be combined with a yearly political round table to consider a global progress report and a Leaders summit in 2023.

The pact was notable for naming coal as a root cause of the climate problem, for the first time in 30 years of UN diplomacy. The final text included the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels, phase out subsidies for fossil fuels and transition countries to using more renewable energy. The pact does not, however, hold wealthy countries to specific financial commitments to help poorer countries, the most devastated by climate change.

While the Glasgow Climate Pact is an ambitious attempt to rein in rising temperatures, the last-minute row over coal has undoubtedly cast a shadow over the deal. India was joined by China in pushing for a watering down of this key commitment, insisting on "phasing down" rather than "phasing out".  COP26 President, the tireless Alok Sharma, said that they would have to "explain themselves" to vulnerable nations.

The new deal comes just a few days after another notable Chinese achievement. Last Wednesday, the Xinhua news agency trumpeted the fact that the country produced more coal than ever before on a single day. When consumed for energy the one day of coal will produce carbon dioxide emissions roughly equivalent to Ireland's output for an entire year!

There are also vague clauses that will allow some countries to avoid updating their plans to cut emissions, depending on "differing national circumstances". There are real worries that some bigger developing economies like India and China will use that clause to skip updating their plans next year.

There are growing fears that the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C is unlikely to be met. UN Secretary General António Guterres said the summit would probably not see governments make the pledges needed to cut CO2 emissions by enough. However there was a glimmer of hope when activists and politicians gave a cautious welcome to the unexpected announcement that the US and China would work together to tackle climate change. The US-China declaration sees the two countries, the two biggest CO2 emitters in the world, vow to boost climate co-operation over the next decade, working together to achieve the 1.5C temperature goal set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Ultimately, this controversial pact does keep hope alive that temperatures may be held in check, somewhere between 1.8C and 2.4C this century.  However this is a frightening prospect in a world that has warmed by just over half that amount already, with massive impacts around the globe.

According to an analysis by the Climate Action Tracker, the world is still nowhere near its goals on limiting global temperature rise, despite the pledges made at COP26. It calculates that the world is heading for 2.4C of warming, far more than the 1.5C limit nations committed to. COP26 "has a massive credibility, action and commitment gap", according to the analysis.

There have been lots of promises but only time will tell if COP26 was a success, or merely more 'hot air'.

@barrywills