This guest essay first appeared in the York Daily Record on December 8, 2021--
I recently returned from the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. U.S. Special Envoy John Kerry had declared COP26 the “last best hope for the world to get its act together.”
While the agreed-upon Glasgow Climate Pact achieved some significant objectives, pledges fell 1 degree C short of securing a habitable future world.
COP26 commitments have put our planetary fever on a path toward at least 2.4 degree C of warming by 2100 as opposed to the Paris Agreement aspiration of 1.5 degrees C.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres lamented that the final texts, “take important steps, but unfortunately the collective political will was not enough to overcome some deep contradictions.”
Among those contradictions is the need to wean society off fossil fuels versus the desire for short-term economic gain.
Of note, the United Nations Framework on Climate Change was adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 with the goal of preventing dangerous human influence in the Earth’s climate system.
The annual Conference of Parties was to fill in the details.
Although ravenous consumption of fossil fuels is the primary driver of climate change, it took years of wrangling and 25 failed attempts, but COP26 finally succeeded in scribing “fossil fuels” and “coal” into a UNFCCC text for the first time.
The first draft of a climate pact was distributed on Wednesday during the second week of COP26. That draft called on “Parties to accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels.”
However, in the final hours of the summit on Saturday evening, envoys from China and India demanded dilution of the language from “phasing-out” to “phase-down of unabated coal power” and from “subsidies for fossil fuels” to “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.”
This allows the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter China and third largest India to continue chain-smoking coal to power their industrial machines. And of course, fossil fuel producing nations can continue extracting oil and coal provided they mine it with efficient subsidies.
It is significant, however, that “fossil fuels” and “coal” finally survived in a COP text.
We in the U.S. cannot point our fingers at the fossil fuel-consuming behemoths China and India without acknowledging our own historical and continuing emissions.
The U.S. only recently relinquished its infamous distinction as the leading greenhouse gas producer to China in 2005.
And we remain sandwiched between China and India as the second leading greenhouse gas producer.
On a per capita basis, we in the U.S. spew twice the emissions as China and 7 times more than India.
In spite of the inability of the three leading greenhouse gas emitters to control their fossil fuel binging, global leaders are emerging to steer our global ship toward a new era.
Costa Rica and Denmark led a coalition of 11 founding members in launching the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance — a “first of its kind alliance” committed to phasing out the production of oil and gas.
Actions of the past, including nearly all climate agreements, put pressure on consumers to solve the climate crisis. BOGA attacks the source.
The climate crisis cannot be solved unless we halt the transfer of carbon from its terrestrial tomb to the atmosphere. BOGA members acknowledge, “It’s not easy… it’s expensive… it requires a lot of dialogue, schooling, training and investment in renewable energy… but it is a just transition that produces jobs.”
The Glasgow Climate Pact achieved some positive overarching decisions regarding an appeal for developed countries to redouble financing for adaptation and a call for new or updated nationally determined contributions prior to COP27 scheduled to take place in Egypt in November 2022.
They also finalized the Paris Agreement Rulebook which means that carbon trading and carbon market aspirations outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement are now operational and implementable.
But Small Island States, Indigenous Peoples, developing countries, and other marginalized nations lamented the outcome of COP26.
It did not end fossil fuel subsidies, phase out coal, put a price on carbon, nor commit the promised $100 billion in climate finance for developing countries.
Nations disappearing beneath rising oceans, losing their freshwater sources from receding mountain glaciers, suffering from scorched earth and deluges, climate-induced food insecurity, spread of infectious borne diseases and more hold the greatest claim to climate injustice.
“Existential crisis” defines their future if our global fever rises more than 1.5 degrees C.
The stone age did not end when our Homo ancestors ran out of stones, nor will the age of fossil fuels end when modern humans suck the last drop of oil or gouge the last chunk of coal from the bowels of the Earth.
Just as we transitioned away from stones to cheaper, better bronze implements, so too will renewable resources transition us away from fossil fuels.
Will we do this in time to avoid a climate catastrophe for our planet remains in question.
Short-term economic greed and today’s political narcissism continues to thwart the level of action needed.
What can you do? Vote for local, state, and national policy makers who understand the climate emergency.
Vote with your wallet by purchasing goods and services from businesses and nations transitioning to a green economy.
Make efforts to reduce your own carbon footprint.
On behalf of my grandchildren, your children and grandchildren, the world’s disenfranchised peoples, and as-yet unborn generations, thanks for reading… and for taking action.
Keith E. Peterman, Ph.D. is professor emeritus of York College of Pennsylvania.
NewsClips:
-- PA Cap-Star: Multiple Efforts Continue In The General Assembly To Block DEP’s Regulation Reducing Carbon Pollution From Power Plants
-- BCTV.org: Pennsylvanians Make Their Voices Heard At EPA Oil & Gas Methane Rule Hearing
-- PG - Anya Litvak: 2 Pittsburgh CEOs Make Very Different Pitches For Why The World Needs More Natural Gas
Related Articles:
-- DEP Blog: Pennsylvania Has A Strong Climate Action Plan, And We Need To Use It Now
-- Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Allowance Prices Jump To $13 From $9.30 In September
[Posted: December 9, 2021] PA Environment Digest
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