Photo by Максим Шмаков - Getty Images
Power Plant
For the 29th time, UN member countries held a Conference of the Parties (in UN shorthand, a “COP”) to draft policies to address problems associated with global warming, and for the 28th time, little progress was made. COP21, held in Paris in 2015, was the exception, because of the historic agreement achieved at that event to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” by 2050.
However, scientific projections show that member countries’ dithering, insincere commitments to reducing fossil fuel production and consumption, and cockamamie pseudo-solutions, such as championing fossil gas as a bridge to clean energy and unscalable carbon capture and storage technologies, have made it virtually impossible to achieve that goal by 2050.
Petrostates and fossil fuel companies again block significant progress
As with COP28, held in the United Arab Emirates, an authoritarian petrostate, COP29 was hosted by Azerbaijan, another authoritarian petrostate. In welcoming attendees to this year’s conference, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev proclaimed oil and gas as a “gift of God,” a message that flew in the face of what the conference was supposed to be about. Not only that, BBC reported that the chief executive of Azerbaijan’s COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, was recorded touting Azerbaijan’s attractiveness as a fossil fuel investment, thus turning a conference intended to reduce fossil fuel emissions into a bazaar for increasing them. Equally troubling, the fossil fuel industry itself appears to be calling many of the shots behind the scenes of these recent annual COP charades. The Guardian reported that “Fossil fuel-linked lobbyists outnumber delegations of almost every country at climate talks in Baku.”
Questionable Performance on Top Agenda Items
Two of the most important topics at this year’s conference were climate credits and climate finance.
Climate credits are a means for countries and corporations to indirectly reduce their greenhouse gas footprints by paying for initiatives carried out by other entities that reduce emissions, for example carbon sequestration through forest preservation and clean energy development projects. Research has shown that most climate credit projects reduce emissions by far lower amounts than claimed, thus the need for greater accountability for these projects. The conference did reach an agreement on tighter rules for such projects. But the devil is always in the details, and time will tell whether the revised climate credit criteria and monitoring will be effective.
Climate finance, essentially payments by developed countries to developing countries to assist them to carry out clean energy projects and mitigate damages from global warming, was by far the most contentious issue addressed at the conference. And it was not addressed to the satisfaction of most developing countries. A last-minute “compromise,” which was really a “take it or leave it” proposition by the developed countries, was passed at the end of the conference offering far less money than the trillions of dollars needed. As reported by International IDEA, “Some delegations defined the outcome as ‘a joke’ and ‘an insult’, the least developed countries (LDCs) and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) being the most disappointed.”
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The Three Elephants
Trump, who has consistently promised to pull out of the Paris Agreement in 2025 as he did during his first administration, was not at the conference, but his shadow loomed over it. His frequent climate change denials and the projected absence of U.S. funding for climate action over the next four years put a damper over the conference. China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, but also defined as a developing country, was not formally included in the commitment to provide climate financial assistance to other developing countries. But informally, China positioned itself to replace the U.S. as the climate action champion of the developing world. Saudi Arabia played the role of behind-the-scenes spoiler at the conference, undercutting the agreement reached at COP28 to “transition away from fossil fuel.” Largely as a result of its lobbying efforts, the theme of fossil fuel reduction appeared nowhere in the COP29 final documents.
The Need for an Effective Worldwide Strategy to Take on Global Warming
The BBC summarized an open letter presented by climate experts to conference participants, stating that, as currently structured, the climate talks “simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.” The BBC article further reported that “the authors [of the letter] are concerned that the current COP process is not able to make change happen quickly or able to force countries to act.”COP30, to be held in Brazil in November 2025, has an ambitious agenda. Key focus areas will be:
- Road Transport: Expanding the Global Zero Emissions Vehicles (ZEV) Transition Roadmap to increase ZEV adoption in emerging markets.
- Power Generation: Tripling renewable power capacity and doubling energy efficiency improvements.
- Steel and Cement: Defining low and near-zero emissions standards to facilitate adoption within national policies by 2025.
- Buildings: Launching a Global Framework for Action for Near-Zero Emission and Resilient Buildings (NZERB).
Here’s hoping that UN General Assembly members and the rest of us can begin to achieve the “exponential speed and scale” in Brazil, which appears to have a genuine commitment to rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a goal that was so clearly lacking in Azerbaijan.
