November 15, 2021 11:48 AM
The 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), which concluded in Glasgow on 13 November, was described by its organizers as “a huge step forward” in the fight against climate change. After all, the agreement reached after more than two weeks of negotiations and signed by nearly two hundred countries explicitly mentions for the first time the need to limit the use of fossil fuels – even if at the last minute China and India have imposed modify the passage that asked to eliminate the use of coal, replacing it with a more generic one to reduce it.
Another agreement signed in Glasgow should regulate the international emission credit market outlined in 2015 in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, eliminating the main loopholes that risked making this instrument useless if not even counterproductive. On the sidelines of the summit, several separate agreements were also announced, such as the one for the 30 percent reduction of methane emissions by 2030, signed by over one hundred countries, the one to stop deforestation by the same date and the one for abandonment. of coal, signed by 40 countries, not to mention the commitment expressed by the two countries with the largest greenhouse gas emissions in the world, China and the United States, to cooperate in the fight against climate change.
Many observers have made less flattering judgments. Environmental organizations defined the agreement as inconsistent, and several protagonists of the summit, including President Alok Sharma himself, did not hide their disappointment at the watering down of the final text. The representatives of the countries most exposed to the effects of climate change have denounced the lack of approval of a system for the compensation of the damage caused by it, to which the industrialized countries, responsible for the most part for the historical emissions of greenhouse gases, have resolutely opposed . The commitment that the latter would have to provide one hundred billion dollars a year to developing countries to finance the energy transition, set in 2009 and never met, has been replaced by the promise to mobilize about five hundred billion dollars by 2025 – a figure defined as insufficient by those directly involved.
At least twenty years late, the climate emergency has finally become a global priority
To determine whether the Glasgow conference was a success or a failure, however, one would first need to establish precisely what is meant by these two terms. If we are to judge it in light of its stated goal – to prevent the global average temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees by the end of the century compared to the pre-industrial era – then there is no doubt that COP26 has failed. According to the calculations of the International Energy Agency (IEA), if all countries stick to the plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions they submitted in Glasgow (the so-called Nationally Determined Contributions, NDC), in 2100 global warming will touch 1.8 degrees.
One might think that the target was narrowly missed, but this figure was obtained by taking into account the long-term commitments on zero net greenhouse gas emissions, a target that the European Union and the United States have set at the 2050, China by 2060 and India even by 2070. Many scientists and activists consider these goals too indefinite and impossible to achieve without medium-term strategies, and prefer to focus on plans for 2030. By calculating only the latter, the group of Climate action tracker research predicts global temperatures will rise by at least 2.4 degrees. And this obviously assuming that the commitments will be respected to the letter: with current policies, warming would reach 2.7 degrees.
If, on the other hand, we have to evaluate the COP26 compared to the previous ones, the picture changes markedly. At the time of the Paris conference in 2015, the same Climate action tracker calculated that with the policies then in force, the increase in temperature would reach 3.6 degrees. The wave of enthusiasm aroused by that “historic” summit was soon exhausted, also because the following year Donald Trump was elected president of the United States and announced that he wanted to abandon the agreement. In the four inconclusive annual summits that followed after Paris, the distance between the parties and the clear lack of shared commitment had led many to question the very possibility of a globally coordinated approach to limiting climate change.
In Glasgow the change of pace was evident, as was the determination of the organizers to overcome the obstacles that emerged on the final day and avoid the conference ending in a complete fiasco. What made the difference, in addition to the development of an ever-expanding global climate movement and Trump’s departure, was above all the enormous impression created by the extreme climatic events of the last two years: this time the negotiators knew that at the time to read the conclusions of the summit would literally have the eyes of the world on them. At least twenty years late, the climate emergency has finally become a global priority. The Glasgow conference certified it, and this was probably the most important result it could achieve.
Despite the high-sounding statements that preceded and accompanied the event, in fact, the reality is that the climate crisis will not be resolved by the leaders of the United Nations. The agreements reached in these offices, even the most ambitious ones, are not binding and there is no way to force the states that have signed them to concretely respect them. Goals and deadlines are useful for making politicians and the public understand the urgency to act, but they must not be mistaken for an end in themselves: the fight against the climate emergency is not a game that will end with a precise result in the 2030, in 2050 or in 2100, but a challenge in which humanity will be engaged with mixed fortunes for the next few centuries.
To paraphrase a famous (and probably spurious) quote attributed to Winston Churchill, success will never be final and failure will never be fatal. Political will will always be decisive: the determination to invest the enormous resources necessary to revolutionize the entire economic structure of our civilization and to overcome the very strong resistance that such an upheaval is bound to provoke. In Glasgow, despite everything, there were encouraging signs that this will is finally taking root.
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