For COP26, Climate Realism Is Better Than Climate Alarmism

Next November the “Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change” will meet in Glasgow, Scotland.

There, they will hold their 26th conference to discuss how the countries of the world will deal with a perceived global warming “crisis.”

This meeting marks the five-year anniversary of the agreement reached at COP21 in Paris in 2015.

There, the parties agreed they would seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so as to limit the rise in average global temperatures to no more than two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by 2100.

In pursuit of that goal, they agreed to submit, every five years, plans to reduce emissions voluntarily by various amounts, with an initial end-date of 2030.

They also agreed to submit updated plans every five years, indicating their progress towards the 2030 objectives, as well as their additional plans for the next five years.

In 2015, the Canadian government voluntarily committed to reduce emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2050.

That works out to just 512 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, compared with actual emissions in 2017 of 716 million tonnes.

The world’s 10 largest emitters, representing almost 80 percent of global emissions, also submitted plans.

The deadline to submit the progress reports and new plans was Feb. 9 of this year. In the event, only three of the 186 parties submitted these documents.

None of the 10 largest emitters did so.

Carbon Action Tracker, an online source of information operated by a climate activist group, produces regular updates based on its close monitoring of emissions-reduction activity.

To no one’s great surprise, of the 10 largest emitters, only the European Union is potentially on track to meet its 2030 commitment.

Even if the commitments were met, and the related actions maintained until 2010, the two-degree Celsius temperature goal would probably be exceeded by 0.8 degrees Celsius.

Another clause in the 2015 agreement committed the “Annex II” countries, all members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), to contribute $100 billion per year to a Global Climate Fund to help finance the emissions-reduction plans of the developing countries.

In fact, as of mid-2018, total contributions to the Green Climate fund were US$10.2 billion, and there is no indication the Annex II countries intend to meet their commitment for 2020.

That will be awkward, as several of the developing countries have made their commitments to emissions reduction conditional on receiving the Green Climate Fund support.

The announced departure of the United States from the Paris Agreement means that, if somehow the remaining Annex II countries were to make up the funding shortfall, their individual contributions would have to be much higher.

If the apportionment of funding were based on GDP, Canada’s share would be about $3.6 billion per year.

No doubt more countries will file updated plans before November but at this point, it appears virtually certain the parties will remain well off-track in terms of the 2030 goals.

The high political profile of the conference and the probable presence of Greta Thunberg and a supporting cast of over a thousand media representatives will ensure a highly reported wringing of hands about the need to redouble efforts to reduce emissions.

From this vantage point, the 2030 targets seem likely to meet the same fate as the previous global targets set for 2000, 2010, and 2020 — that is, they will be missed by a wide margin and succeeded by ever more stringent and unattainable targets for the future.

Canadians remain remarkably ill-informed about the trends in international emissions and the very small role Canada plays.

Almost all political parties declare absolute allegiance to emissions-reduction targets that cannot be met and would have virtually no impact on the trends in global emissions if they were.

So, what is to be done?

If one is convinced by the arguments that human emissions pose unacceptable risks in terms of future climate effects, then the wise course would be to devote most of our climate-related expenditures, not to emissions reduction, but to actions that will improve Canada’s ability to adapt to the climate changes that occur and to carefully monitoring these changes over time.

If, however, the science and modeling that underpin current projections of climate emergency seem of doubtful credibility, Canadians should adopt a different insurance policy against future harm: focusing on emissions reductions that offer economic and environmental benefits beyond GHG emissions; investing heavily in research and development on new energy technologies; protecting Canadian industry and jobs from the harmful competitive effects of higher energy costs; and assessing proposals for new energy infrastructure according to a broad range of public policy considerations, not just those related to emissions reduction.

Climate realism will serve us better than climate alarm.

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