What if COP26 is a failure?
The world is not on target to meet the Paris agreement climate goals. Unless that changes, mankind's future hangs in the balance.
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With less than a month to go until COP26 (the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties) in Glasgow, the much anticipated and pandemic-delayed international follow-up to the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference (COP21), at which 196 countries adopted the Paris Agreement to limit average global temperature rise to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably 1.5 C, compared to pre-industrial levels, it is painfullly clear that the Paris goal will be exceeded before the end of this century and maybe forever unless world governments quickly adopt more urgent and ambitious plans now to cut greenhouse emissions.
Scientists agree that limiting future temperature rise to 1.5 C requires cutting heat-trapping emissions in half within 10 years and eliminating them completely within 30 years. Such a drastic cut is still possible, they say, but incredibly challenging in a world driven in large measure by politics and greed.
The math is discouraging. On September 17, the United Nations released a report of the first Nationally Determined Contributions, which are countries’ plans and goals for achieving the 1.5 C target. The NDCs fell catastrophically short. Instead of emissions falling by 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2010 levels, they would increase by 16 percent, putting the planet on a “catastrophic pathway” towards 2.7 C of temperature rise by century’s end even if all countries meet their proposed emissions cuts. That will make much of the world uninhabitable due to heatwaves, droughts, floods and extreme wildfires and cause incalculable human and physical damage.
Said UN Secretary General António Guterres:
“We need a 45 per cent cut in emissions by 2030, to reach carbon neutrality by mid-century…It is clear that everyone must assume their responsibilities.”
He added:
“The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was a code red for humanity. But it also made clear that it is not too late to meet the Paris Agreement 1.5-degree target. We have the tools to achieve this target. But we are rapidly running out of time.”
Former UN climate secretary Christiana Figueres added in a statement.
“Now science is shouting from the rooftops that it’s time to level up actions in an order of magnitude sufficient to the challenge. COP26 is almost upon us and there is still time for governments to contribute more to the necessary solutions. All other geopolitical issues will fade into irrelevance if we fail to rise to the existential challenge that climate change presents.”
After a year in which the science has never been more certain and the number and intensity of extreme weather events have made believers in anthropogenic climate out of even former skeptics, it’s disheartening that the public outcry has not been greater. Citizens everywhere should be demanding more from their leaders before all is lost.
The future is not pretty. A new analysis published last week in Science shows that under current climate policy, newborn children across the globe will face—on average—seven times more heatwaves during their lives than their grandparents:
“…we estimate that children born in 2020 will experience a two- to sevenfold increase in extreme events, particularly heat waves, compared with people born in 1960, under current climate policy pledges. Our results highlight a severe threat to the safety of young generations and call for drastic emission reductions to safeguard their future.”
A companion paper titled '‘Born into the Climate Crisis'‘ published by the Save the Children Foundation explains:
New modeling developed by an international team of climate researchers, led by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, finds that under Paris Agreement pledges, a child born in 2020 will experience on average twice as many wildfires, 2.8 times the exposure to crop failure, 2.6 times as many drought events, 2.8 times as many river floods, and 6.8 times more heatwaves across their lifetimes, compared to a person born in 1964 . The data shows that it is the children of many low- and middle-income countries who will continue to bear the brunt of worsening climate change.
Lead author Professor Wim Thiery from VUB said:
“This basically means that people younger than 40 today will live an unprecedented life even under the most stringent climate change mitigation scenarios. Our results highlight a severe threat to the safety of young generations and call for drastic emission reductions to safeguard their future.”
Will COP26 right the sinking ship? Judging from the lack of urgent response to the UN’s IPCC assessment, gathering everybody in the same place may not be enough. We have to believe that world leaders are already aware of the UN’s findings that not enough is being done to meet the Paris goal but they do not seem to be rising to the challenge.
The U.S. is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and the Biden administration has some ambitious climate plans but they are part of the stalled Build Back Better reconciliation package that is currently being held hostage in the Senate by a couple of Democratic senators.
The heart of that climate measure in the bill is a $150 billion Clean Electricity Performance Program which would incentivize utilities that use more renewable energy sources and punish those who don’t. The goal is for the U.S. to get 80 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030—up from 40% today. Given the snail’s pace of Congress, it seems unlikely that Biden will be able to present the measure as a done deal by the Glasgow conference.
COP26 will no doubt produce some lofty promises and perhaps even some substantive changes. But, more likely, there will be lots of press releases and photo ops and then everyone will go home and back to business as usual. And, extreme weather, will get worse.
Complicating the issue is that there is an enormous disconnect between politicians and scientists and the world is already drowning in misinformation. Witness the millions of Americans who refuse to get a Covid vaccine. Are they going to take climate change more seriously? Probably not.
I have to think that even now the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos’ of the world are contemplating designs for underground, climate-controlled cities where the world’s wealthiest citizens and their families can hunker down for a century or two until what’s left of the earth heals. Paging Dr. Strangelove. I’m joking. I think.
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Dig Deeper
Current climate action targets not enough to meet Paris goal (Times of India)
COP26 Goals (United Nations)
Nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement Synthesis (report by the secretariat)
Born into the Climate Crisis (Save the Children)
Intergenerational inequities in exposure to climate extremes (Science)