As 30,000 world leaders, diplomats, scientists, activists, journalists, and business executives gather in Glasgow, Scotland, for COP26, the outlook is a complex blend of pessimism and optimism.
The assignment for those attending this 26th Conference of the Parties October 31 to November 12 (including President Joe Biden) is to set new targets for cutting emissions from burning coal, oil and gas. At COP21 in Paris six years ago, more than 190 nations established a long-term temperature goal of keeping the rise in mean global temperature to well below 2 °C (3.6 °F) above pre-industrial levels, and preferably limiting the increase to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). As part of the treaty, each nation was to develop its nationally determined contributions (NDCs) by 2020.
These non-binding commitments are the pledges that participating countries are supposed to be updating. So far 17 countries (including the U.S.) and the European Union have made new pledges. Among the major emitters that have yet to do so are China, Russia, and India.
On October 26, Australia’s government promised to reach “net-zero” emissions by 2050, unveiling a plan that The New York Times’ Damien Cave wrote is “built on hope and investment in low-emissions technologies. Promising jobs and no new taxes or mandates, the plan did not include any toughening of emissions targets for 2030 — a major component of what scientists have said will be needed from world leaders at (Glasgow).”
The U.K. and U.N. hosts have said they want to “keep hope alive” of constraining global temperature rise to under 1.5 degrees Celsius, New York Times reporter Lisa Friedman wrote. “Meeting that goal means all countries must commit to cutting emissions faster and deeper than they already are doing.”
“We’re not bending the curve as much as we should,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme, told Brady Dennis of The Washington Post. “We need to get much more ambitious.”
A new U.N. report estimates that new commitments from about 120 nations, as of the end of September, could result in a 7.5 percent cut to the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 if fully implemented. “But,” Dennis wrote, “emissions would actually need to fall about seven times that fast to hit the most lofty goal of the Paris agreement — limiting Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.”
Some experts want to look on the bright side. “There has been a genuine shift over the past decade,” said Niklas Höhne, a German climatologist and founding partner of NewClimate Institute, which created the Climate Action Tracker. “You can say that progress has been too slow, that it’s still not enough, and I agree with all that. But we do see real movement.”
One major reason for that movement is the plummeting cost of renewable energy. “A decade ago,” Brad Plumer reported in The New York Times, “solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles were often seen as niche technologies, too expensive for widespread use... Today, wind and solar power are the cheapest new source of electricity in most markets. Electric vehicle sales are setting records. Automakers like Ford and General Motors are now preparing to phase down sales of gasoline-powered cars...”
Yet there are troubling signs of lost opportunities. Efforts to promote economic recovery from the pandemic could have focused much more on tackling climate change. “We are witnessing an uneven and unsustainable recovery from last year’s economic crisis – a recovery that consists of huge growth in fossil fuel consumption while leaving behind nearly 80% of the world’s population in the shift towards a new and cleaner energy economy,” said Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which has just issued a sobering report.
The mixed outlook is also true in the business community. Many major corporations, such as Procter & Gamble and Unilever, are promoting a more rapid transition to a carbon-free economy, and the Business Roundtable has issued a pre-COP26 statement in support of decarbonization. But in some segments of the business community, you can hear the sound of heels dragging.
One COP26 test is methane. Rachel Frazen, a reporter for The Hill, wrote, “In recent months, the international community has shown momentum on reducing its emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period. The U.S. and European Union are leading a global methane pledge, which seeks to reduce global methane pollution by at least 30 percent by 2030 and which more than 30 countries have signed.”
James Hansen, who, as a NASA scientist a quarter century ago testified in Congress about the threat posed by climate change, recently told The Washington Post, “We need to get on a different path soon. And we won’t get on that path without a price on carbon. The fundamental requirement is to provide the incentives that will lead us to carbon-free energy. That means you have to make the price of fossil fuels honest. It has to include the cost to society.
“I’ve been pushing a carbon fee and dividend [a system in which governments tax emissions and distribute the revenue to citizens]. But frankly, getting 200 nations around the table to come to the agreement is probably not a practical way to do it.
“The fact is that the U.S. and China could do it. They could put a border duty on products from countries that do not have an equivalent carbon fee, and that would encourage other countries to have their own carbon fee.”