The pledges have flown thick and fast; every day the Government and other authorities are making one bold announcement after another on the success of talks determining the future of the planet.
But halfway through COP26 in Glasgow, the reality may not be living up to the hype.
An analysis by The Daily Telegraph suggests a large gap between the official communique and the stark truth.
Coal
What they say:
The UK made a breakthrough announcement last Thursday that 190 countries and organizations were now committed to phasing out the use of coal. In an official release, Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business and Energy secretary, declared that “spearheaded by the UK’s COP26 presidency… the end of coal is in sight”.
The reality:
Critics were quick to accuse the Government of overselling the deal. Although the announcement sounded impressive, the number of countries signed up totaled just 45 and did not include the US, China, India, or Russia.
Wales was cheekily included as an extra nation alongside the United Kingdom. The Government had also added to the pledge 120 entities who had already signed up to a separate Powering Past Coal Alliance agreed as long ago as 2017.
Even of the 190 entities that the Government was including, it emerged that only 23 were countries with new commitments and six of those had not fully committed. Ten of the countries that were signed up to the pledge don’t actually use [coal] in their power stations.
The wording of the pledge also appeared to be watered down with a commitment to end coal power for developed nations by 2030 and by 2040 for developing nations. Crucially, a caveat was added “or as soon as possible thereafter”.
For example, Indonesia, a major coal user, agreed to phase out coal “into the 2040s” but only on the condition of receiving financial support. Poland declared itself a developing nation to fit in with its own deadline of 2049.
Trees
What they say:
In Cop26’s first major deal, Boris Johnson announced that 110 countries – “more leaders than ever before” in the prime minister’s words – had made the “landmark” commitment to end and reverse deforestation by 2030. The pledge includes £14bn of public and private funds to encourage success.
The reality:
This all sounded like quite the breakthrough until experts pointed out it was hardly a “landmark” at all. A similar pledge was made in 2014 at the New York Declaration on Forests and five years on was declared a failure.
That declaration, endorsed at the 2014 UN climate summit in New York was endorsed by 150 governments, companies, and other organizations. The deal pledged to halve deforestation by 2020 and end it by 2030.
But an official report in 2019 said the New York declaration had been a failure and that deforestation had “actually accelerated” in the intervening years.
There may be improvements this time round with Brazil – which includes vast swathes of the Amazon rainforest – and Russia among the signatories in Glasgow.
Prof Simon Lewis, an expert on climate and forests at University College London, said the political commitment was “good news” but warned the world “has been here before” in reference to the 2014 agreement “which failed to slow deforestation at all”.
Cash
What they say:
More than 450 firms with assets totaling $130 trillion announced their commitment last Wednesday to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. They signed up to the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ).
Trumpeted by Mark Carney as a “watershed” moment, the former governor of the Bank of England declared: “Right here, right now is where private finance draws the line.”
Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed. “This is a historic wall of capital for the net-zero transition around the world,” said Mr. Sunak.
The reality:
The announcement might have been “watershed” but the figure was “eye-watering”, prompting the Financial Times to question the $130 trillion figure, pointing out that “the market capitalization of the world’s stock markets is only about $120tn” in the first place.
Any layperson might have thought this vast sum was being invested to make the world go green. But it did not even include a promise that would prevent financial firms from making investments in fossil fuels.
The University of Oxford’s Oxford Sustainable Finance Group said it would not be possible to deliver on climate pledges without “halting the financing of new fossil fuel infrastructure” and the GFANZ did not promise that.
One campaign group – Corporate Europe Observatory – said that Cop26 “looks set to become the biggest finance greenwash in history”.
Critics pointed out that the $100 billion promised to developing countries as long ago as 2009 to battle climate change in 2020 to 2025 will not be delivered until 2023 at the earliest.
In other words, it’s all very well talking up a hypothetical $130 trillion, when $100 billion of real money still hasn’t been raised.
Temperature
What they say:
Led by president Joe Biden and Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, more than 100 nations pledged to reduce global methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030.
The influential International Energy Agency (IEA) said that with all the commitments being made at COP26, the world was now on course to limit any temperature rise to 1.8C by the end of the century.
This was heralded as a triumph for COP26 because, pre-conference, the IEA was predicting a temperature rise above preindustrial levels of 2.1C by the year 2100.
The reality:
The Global Methane Pledge comes with caveats. Major emitters like Russia, China, and India have not signed up and the commitments are all voluntary.
The IEA announcement comes with its own pinch of salt. The United Nations points out that even with these national plans in place, all greenhouse gas emissions will rise by 13.7 percent by 2030. In fact, to keep to 1.5C, emissions need to fall in the next decade by 45 percent.
Even the IEA is skeptical. Dr. Fatih Birol, its executive director, said its updated analysis showed that the targets would need to be “met in full and on time” to hold the global temperature rise to 1.8C. But he added: “we still fall well short of what is needed to keep the door open to 1.5C.”
Read more at Daily Telegraph
Why does nobody refer to known history? “Pre-industrial levels” of temperature inevitably means when the Little Ice Age, Maunder and Dalton minima 1350 AD to about 1850 AD were bringing not only bitter winters but wild extremes. catastrophic floods volcanic eruptions, sometimes blazing summers, etc. In other words, since that period ended (and humanity had nothing to do with it) it has grown a little bit milder and warmer. However, the period around 1940 to about 1980 had reports from scientists, and when satellites were first used in the 1970s, of a coming little ice age. Since humanity during that period saw intensifying industry and fossil fuel use, (WW2 and huge growth in industry) why did it get colder then? Why did Vikings settle with dairy and sheep herds on a land they named “Greenland” if it became colder, then leave as it iced over as the Medieval warm period ended? “Pre-industrial levels” is a cheat.
The article assumes a direct correlation between emissions and the Earth’s average temperature. This is false. Of the many parameters influencing the temperature, the level of solar output has the biggest impact.