There are a few hours to go until the end of the COP26 international climate summit, unless the talks go into extra time, as has happened on other occasions. The situation appears very uncertain. We still don’t know what the final text will contain, because the negotiators are still writing and rewriting it. But, in the meantime, there was no shortage of action.
The big news was the announcement of a pact between the United States and China, which strengthens climate cooperation between the two countries. Both said they will work together to achieve the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as set out in the Paris Agreement. Foreseeing “the adoption of more decisive and more ambitious climate actions for the twenties of this century”.
What should we think? On the one hand, there is little real substance. The statement does not include specific new goals or funding. Its value, therefore, is mostly symbolic.
On the other hand, this symbolic value is remarkable. Relations between the United States and China are quite bad at the moment, yet the two governments have agreed. This underlines the gravity of the climate crisis and sends an implicit message to other governments in conflict with each other to solve their problems: accept this pain, do what you want. but turn the page. Whether this will lead to better results for the summit as a whole remains to be seen.
This uncertainty is actually a recurring element in all discussions on COP26. According to Ed King of the European Climate Foundation, based in the Netherlands, “this is an incredibly difficult summit to pin down. It has a grueling, unique complexity and people are getting tired ”. Even the experts aren’t sure how successful the summit will ultimately achieve.
One of the difficulties is the huge number of issues being discussed simultaneously, from emission cuts to financing for developing nations and much more. At the same time, many of the major countries have internal problems that make it difficult to make commitments for large-scale actions. As Politico magazine wrote, “the United States is hampered by Congress… Germany does not yet have a government; France is facing one of its most uncertain presidential elections; the UK, through its Treasury Department, has just launched a fiscal austerity policy; the Japanese government is only two weeks old, and Canada’s is not much older ”.
This concept is well expressed by Ed Miliband, the UK’s shadow secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy, in his interview with Jason Arunn Murugesu of New Scientist. “I don’t think anyone in the government understands how complicated this is,” Miliband said. “They are used to summits where you arrive, sign a communiqué – taking as little effort as possible – and then go away. This is instead a rather fragile and incredibly complex negotiation ”.
How fragile? At a press conference on 11 November, UK lead negotiator Archie Young said that an unspecified country, speaking on behalf of other states, suggested deleting “the entire section” from the draft text. cutting emissions.
Cut out fossil fuels
Several countries have joined an alliance that aims to stop any future oil and gas production within their borders. Known as Boga (Beyond oil and gas alliance), this initiative includes France, Sweden and Ireland, who joined the initial signatories, Denmark and Costa Rica.
Some other countries have more or less signed, but not definitively. Portugal, California and New Zealand have pledged to make “significant and concrete steps forward” to reduce oil and gas production. Italy, the second largest oil producer in the European Union, has become a “friend” of the agreement and says it will align future oil and gas extraction with the 2015 Paris Agreement.
And of course there are some notable absences. The UK has not signed, even though it hosts Cop26. In fact, so far the Boga alliance does not include any country that is a major oil and gas producer. Again, it’s all a bit symbolic. But these alliances tend to grow over time and it is therefore possible that, if activists continue to push, other countries will join.
Boga is the latest in a series of agreements to cut fossil fuel production announced during COP26. Twenty-three countries, for example, have pledged to end new coal-fired energy programs, and twenty have pledged to stop funding fossil fuel extraction beyond their borders. Canada is also planning to limit its oil and gas emissions, and South Africa has drafted an agreement to phase out the now massive use of coal. And a group of governments and business leaders are committed to developing green shipping routes, with the goal of cutting the shipping industry’s huge greenhouse gas emissions.
Perhaps crucially, the first draft of the COP26 final text includes a call for the phasing out of coal and fossil fuels. If this is included in the final version, it will be a major diplomatic breakthrough.
In the meantime, what do all these side deals lead to? According to a new analysis by Climate Action Tracker, an independent non-profit science body based in Germany, this is a significant achievement. The researchers looked at all the agreements that were signed up to yesterday. They then estimated how much greenhouse gases will be emitted in 2030 if all are put into practice, and compared this with the level of emissions required to reach the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold.
They concluded that, in 2030, the various agreements will reduce our emissions by 2.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide. That’s a lot of carbon dioxide, but just 9 percent of the cut needed to route us to the 1.5 degree target. As has been repeated regularly this week, such a change will make a real difference to our lives by reducing the worst impacts of global warming. But much more remains to be done. We are not yet attacking the heart of the problem.
Let’s conclude with some historical perspective. A study published in Nature seeks to analyze current human-caused climate warming in the context of all of Earth’s history. The researchers, led by Matthew Osman of the University of Arizona, have reconstructed changes in global mean temperature over the past 24,000 years. This means that the records date back to the so-called Last Glacial Maximum: the last moment, in chronological order, in which sheets of ice grew away from the poles. This analysis goes back to a chilly epoch before writing, the advent of agriculture, and before pets (except perhaps dogs).
You’ve probably guessed it already: both the pace and magnitude of warming we experience today are unprecedented in the entire 24,000-year span. We’ve known since the 1990s that the current warming peak is exceptional – that’s the point of the famous “hockey stick” graph – but the new study illustrates just how exceptional that is.
What to expect
The final texts will give us a clearer idea of the results that will be obtained.
As for the positive news, there is “a lot more urgency in the language, a greater sense of alarm, more than I have seen in any previous text, and this is excellent,” said Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the Framework Convention of Nations. Unite on climate change. “I am also very happy that the text recognizes that this is the fundamental decade, and that we will have to halve emissions by 2030. It is a new and very useful fact”.
And so maybe, just maybe, the whole thing will end today. But since the first draft of the text has been delayed, and the same has happened for the revised version, don’t count too much on it. Cop 26 could continue over the weekend. It is not an isolated opinion: Figueres thinks the same. “Given the degree of maturity of the text, I don’t think COP will end on Friday 12 November, I think it will go to Saturday 13 due, frankly, to a big problem, indeed a huge one: finance”.
(Translation by Federico Ferrone)
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