The COP26 summit opening in Glasgow on Sunday is a defining moment in the struggle to keep the planet from climate catastrophe. Without commitments to decisive action, the world is on course to blow right through a target of limiting global warming to 1.5C from pre-industrial levels, and head towards an increase well above 2C. That promises a future of extreme weather, rising sea levels and displacement of populations on a scale never seen before. The efforts and expense needed to deal with the resulting chaos and misery would far outstrip the costs, high as they are, of averting such a dire outcome.
The Glasgow meeting is pivotal as the deadline set by the Paris climate agreement five years ago for countries to deliver far more ambitious plans to reduce relentless greenhouse gas emissions. The richest countries must offer evidence that they will help poorer nations meet the cost of addressing the ever more visible impacts of climate change. Crucially, the summit needs to spur new deals to phase out coal, end fossil fuel subsidies, curb deforestation and take other concrete steps to cut emissions.
The omens are not propitious. The pandemic delayed the summit by a year and created logistical misery. Though most countries have submitted new or updated plans, the combined result still leaves the world on track for 2.7C of warming by century’s end, the UN reported this week.
Rich countries pre-pandemic reached only about $80bn of the annual $100bn they vowed in 2009 they would channel in public and private climate finance to poorer nations by 2020. A report commissioned by COP26’s UK hosts suggested the $100bn may not all come until 2023. This has infuriated developing nations, not least in Africa, coming on top of wealthy countries’ failure to provide Covid vaccines. The continent’s 54 countries account for only about 4 per cent of global carbon emissions but are already suffering intensifying weather extremes.
A global energy shortage, meanwhile, has led China, the largest emitter, to order more production of coal, the dirtiest source of electricity. In the US, the second-biggest emitter, the White House has scrambled to secure credible climate action in a spending package before Congress. Global carbon emissions, which plunged an unprecedented 5.4 per cent in 2020 due to coronavirus, are bouncing back to pre-pandemic levels.
One significant change since 2015 has both underlined the urgency and reshaped the backdrop. A 2018 scientists’ report put hard numbers and dates on how fast global emissions would have to fall, and crystallised 1.5C, not the “well below 2C” in the Paris agreement, as the main global temperature goal. To have a chance of meeting that goal, emissions would have to nearly halve by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. That triggered a flurry of net zero pledges by governments and companies that would have astonished negotiators in Paris, where fossil fuel-rich nations fought to exclude zero emission targets from the accord. Net zero goals by mid-century are not in themselves enough. But they show instantly which governments — and businesses — are on the right side of climate history.
The risk of failure in Glasgow is real. Yet the key to a successful COP26 is held in part by leaders of G20 countries, responsible for about 80 per cent of global emissions, who meet in Rome at the weekend. Glimmers of hope remain that they can take steps that would galvanise the summit to follow.
Some richer countries hint at being ready to take further steps to meet the $100bn climate finance goal. Just as important is sufficient action by G20 countries to seal proposed deals at the COP on hard deadlines for phasing coal and fossil fuel subsidies — meeting a G20 pledge first made in 2009. Last year’s $159bn of subsidies were virtually unchanged, nominally, from 2010. A big prize would be won if, following China’s important pledge in September to stop financing coal projects abroad, the G20 sets a deadline to phase out coal use completely.
Leaders in Rome would be well advised to heed calls by the International Energy Agency to end investment in all new fossil fuel supply projects, end new sales of internal combustion engine cars by 2035, and commit to decarbonise the global electricity sector by 2040.
To stand a chance of restraining temperature rises sufficiently, the G20 and COP processes need to set the world on a path to other sweeping changes. A rapid and massive deployment is required of renewable energy technologies. Dauntingly, the IEA suggests annual additions of solar and wind capacity must build up by 2030 to four times the record level set in 2020.
A global push is needed to increase energy efficiency, insulate homes and electrify road transport, requiring mobilisation of large-scale financing by the public and private sectors working in concert. Emissions must be cut from sectors where that is most difficult — including steel, chemicals, cement, long-distance aviation and shipping.
While deployment of existing technologies at sufficient scale could meet the necessary targets by 2030, hitting those for 2050 will require technologies that are still at an early stage. Governments will have to step up spending on research and development in areas such as advanced batteries and production of “green” hydrogen.
Political leaders in Glasgow should be aware that another change since Paris is the emergence of a new generation of activists and investors ready to hold them to account. Even if they do make progress, they must be open with their populations, both in the developing and the developed world, about the difficulty and cost of what must be done. The race for net zero will not end in Glasgow. But COP26 must ensure it has a chance of becoming a reality, not a perennially distant hope.
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Source: Economy - ft.com
