The latest UN climate summit, COP31, is being held against a backdrop of unprecedented climate chaos, with extreme temperatures, wildfires and droughts across the northern hemisphere. The meeting is taking place in Turkiye, but co-chaired by Turkiye and Australia as a compromise, after Australia lost its battle to be the host nation.
In the run-up to COP31, the UN produced a report of the latest data on global warming. It acknowledges that the aim of the 2015 landmark Paris agreement has not been met to keep temperature rises below 1.5C compared to pre-industrial times, needed to avoid the worst effects of global warming. On present trends there will be a disastrous 2.3C rise, but if carbon dioxide emissions, the main gas cause of climate change, are cut 50% by 2035, the rise could be limited to 1.8C. This is a significant figure because with anything higher it will be impossible to return to 1.5C, according to the UN report.
It is clear from this latest data that the window for taking action to avoid a climate disaster beyond anything yet seen is getting very small. This window could be even smaller if the conclusions of some climate scientists are proved correct that global warming caused by fossil fuel burning is behind the unprecedented intensity of the latest El Niño. This is a warm Pacific Ocean current, occurring every few years, that pushes up global temperatures, independently, it was thought, of fossil fuel burning. However, evidence is growing there is a link between the two.
The picture is still not clear though, since El Niños have been happening for thousands of years, often of very great intensity. It is important not to draw a conclusion that is not yet scientifically fully established, as some activists are. Climate deniers such as President Trump will be quick to label it as ‘fake news’, appealing to those workers who are understandably skeptical on climate issues, since they correctly suspect they will be made to pay to fix it, rather than the real culprit – capitalism.
The agenda for COP31 is aimed at focusing on accelerating the implementation of the agreements made in the 2015 Paris and subsequent summits. There is a long list of action points to achieve this including increasing the active participation of youth, increasing the resilience of vulnerable regions, oceans and seas, strengthening zero waste and circular economies, supporting food security and sustainable agricultural systems, and strengthening financial and institutional mechanisms for climate action. All these points highlight undoubtedly useful outcomes, but there are no targets or timescales attached to achieving them.
On the most important issue of transitioning away from fossil fuels, agreed at an earlier climate summit, the relevant action points more or less directly addressing this are: accelerating the clean energy transition, supporting green and low carbon industrialisation, promoting climate resilient and sustainable cities, and promoting cross-sectoral action addressing climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation. All are important aims except ‘supporting green and low carbon generation’ (my emphasis) gives a green light to expanding fossil fuel use. Again, no targets or timescales are specified.
However, at the pre-summit meeting in Bonn in June, the Australian and Turkish co- chairs announced three targets to ‘operationalise’ the agenda: to increase the share of final energy demand met by electricity by 15% by 2035, reduce the increase in global waste generation by 50% by 2035, and cut energy intensity in the building sector by at least 25% by 2035.
If agreed at COP31, in line with the practice under the 2015 Paris agreement, achieving these targets would be voluntary and no sanction would apply if they were not met.
In the very unlikely event of the targets being achieved, what would the impact be on transitioning away from fossil fuel use? It is very difficult to pin down exactly how much progress would be made, but it is likely to be very small in relation to the need highlighted in the UN report. For example, generating 15% more power from electricity by 2035. If it is assumed (a very big assumption) that achieving 15% more of total energy demand from electricity is met by substituting direct use of gas, oil and coal for space heating, cooking, vehicles, etc, for electricity, and all of it is generated sustainably, it would still be nowhere near reaching the 50% cut in fossil fuel use in the same time frame specified in the UN’s own report.
The signs are not good for the conference seriously addressing the action needed to tackle the crisis, and avoid descending into the farce of recent summits. In their speeches in the run up to the conference neither of the co-hosts mentioned cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Their countries are both major producers of coal, the most harmful of the fossil fuels driving global warming. Australia is one of the world’s leading exporters and has just approved a big expansion of capacity in New South Wales.
Turkiye, already Europe’s biggest coal-fired electricity generator, has plans according to a recent report to increase coal production 30% by 2035. Bearing this in mind and from past experience, it is much more likely that the target for electrification for example, discussed above, will be ignored and if not, that some or all the electricity will be generated using fossil fuels.
In the action points for COP31, the use of low carbon fossil fuels is permitted for ‘industrialisation’, which must presumably include electrification. Countries like Australia and Turkey could even claim to be generating electricity sustainably from coal, citing the use of carbon capture technology or offsetting arrangements, regardless of the fact that the first does not exist on the scale needed and is not safe, and the second is notorious for scams.
For workers in these countries who are worried about their jobs in a transition away from fossil fuels, a concrete plan needs to be put forward showing where their skills will be needed in a sustainable future. For example, in Australia, the abundant solar power could be used to manufacture and export hydrogen, which does not emit greenhouse gases when burnt, that will be a central feature of the green economy globally.
A chasm exists between the COP31 agenda and the action needed to seriously tackle global warming. The conference claims to be prioritising the implementation of previously agreed targets, central to which were countries’ pledges, called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Action on these is now heavily downplayed in COP31, probably because the pledges made so far, if implemented, would result in a temperature rise to a potentially catastrophic 2.3C. Such is the Alice in Wonderland world of climate negotiations in capitalist society.
COP31 looks like following the trend of recent summits of being increasingly influenced by fossil fuel interests and as a result the global warming summits have now lost nearly all credibility with those who seriously want to tackle the crisis. In a society dominated by capitalist interests, it is a predictable and an inevitable development that the countries involved in the negotiations and the multi-national corporations they represent, particularly big oil, are increasingly antagonistic to each other in their search for profit. No progress in general, and on the environment in particular, can be made until the capitalist stranglehold is broken.
Pete Dickenson