In the context of the Paris Agreement, the 197 signatory countries have made specific pledges to reduce their emissions. These are categorized as conditional and unconditional pledges based on the level of commitment and dependency on certain circumstances. Unconditional pledges are the minimal level of commitment countries have vowed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions regardless of external factors or conditions. They are not contingent upon getting outside financial or technical support. Unconditional pledges commit nations to achieving reductions using their own resources and efforts. Fulfilling conditional pledges depends on receiving outside financial and technical assistance. The Paris Agreement allows countries to determine their own nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which can include both unconditional and conditional components.
Scientists view anything above a rise of 2°C over the preindustrial level as disastrous. Given how things are things are going at the 1.3°C rise we’ve already undergone, it’s pretty clear they’re understating the potential impacts, if anything. As for the effects of a rise of 2.5°C or 2.9°C. Well, you don’t have to imagine:
There’s a scrap of good U.S. news on the emissions front. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates these will fall 3% this year. And some scientists think they may fall another 3% in 2024. Over the past two years, emission had been flat or increasing. But energy-related emissions, which make up 80% of total emissions, were down 2.5% in the first three-quarters of the year, according to Carbon Monitor. If that trajectory holds for the last quarter, it would return us to the steady pre-pandemic reduction in U.S. emissions, which had been falling an averate of 1% a year since 2012 until they fell by 10% under the disruption of the coronavirus in 2020.
Although this predicted back-to-back 3% decrease would be welcome, according to the most recent data from the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States needs to cut emissions by about 6% a year to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement. That, means cutting emissions 50-52% of 2005 levels by the end of 2030.
As for the rest of the world. the State of Climate Action 2023 report released November 14 notes the good and bad:
This year’s State of Climate Action finds that progress made in closing the global gap in climate action remains woefully inadequate — 41 of 42 indicators assessed are not on track to achieve their 2030 targets. Progress for more than half of these indicators remains well off track, such that recent efforts must accelerate at least twofold this decade. Worse still, another six indicators are heading in the wrong direction entirely.
Within this set of laggards, efforts to end public financing for fossil fuels, dramatically reduce deforestation and expand carbon pricing systems experienced the most significant setbacks to progress in a single year, relative to recent trends. In 2021, for example, public financing for fossil fuels increased sharply, with government subsidies, specifically, nearly doubling from 2020 to reach the highest levels seen in almost a decade. And in 2022, deforestation increased slightly to 5.8 million hectares (Mha) worldwide, losing an area of forests greater than the size of Croatia in a single year.
But amid such bad news, several bright spots underscore the possibility of rapid change. Over the past five years, the share of electric vehicles in passenger car sales has grown exponentially at an average annual rate of 65% — up from 1.6% of sales in 2018 to 10% of sales in 2022. For the first time in this report series, such progress puts this indicator on track for 2030.
Global efforts are heading in the right direction at a promising, albeit still insufficient, pace for another six indicators, and with the right support, some could soon experience exponential changes. And among all indicators heading in the right direction, those focused on increasing mandatory corporate climate risk disclosure, sales of electric trucks and the share of EVs in the passenger car fleet saw the most significant gains in a single year, relative to recent trends.
Regarding the Emissions Gap Report, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, told The Guardian: “There is no person or economy left on the planet untouched by climate change, so we need to stop setting unwanted records on greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature highs and extreme weather. We must instead lift the needle out of the same old groove of insufficient ambition and not enough action, and start setting other records: on cutting emissions, on green and just transitions and on climate finance.”
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, who has been sounding the climate alarm in strong language since he took on the job, said, “ “Present trends are racing our planet down a dead-end 3°C temperature rise. This is a failure of leadership, a betrayal of the vulnerable, and a massive missed opportunity. Renewables have never been cheaper or more accessible. We know it is still possible to make the 1.5° limit a reality. It requires tearing out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels.”
And that is the crux of the matter that the optimists hope will come about at the 28th international climate summit since the first one in 1995. The COP 28 begins in Dubai in just four days. Although past summit meetings have not been without moves in the right direction, the foot-dragging and outright blockading of rapid actions needed to keep temperatures from rising into apocalyptic territory have given the summits a reputation for what Greta Thunberg has famously labeled the blah, blah, blah.
Brad Johnson at his Hill Heat Substack writes:
The talks are a soup of acronyms that rival even those of Wikipedia editing.1 Perhaps the best way to get a sense of the deeply weird nature of these talks, which began in 1995, when atmospheric carbon dioxide was at 360 parts per million, and have dutifully whiled away into another millennium (420 ppm now), is to read Andrew Dana Hudson’s recently published science-fictional COP memoir, Our Shared Storm. The branching-future book takes place at a COP in 2054, under five distinct climate pathways envisioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
As it is now five years after the signing of the Paris Agreement, COP28 will see the first Global Stocktake, which will officially assess how well the world is doing at meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. As previewed last week, we are officially “severely off track.”
The range of views on objectives and ways to reach these goal is wide. Following the counsel of climatologists, what most climate activists seek is a worldwide commitment to a comprehensive, fair, rapid, and fully funded phase-out of fossil fuels. For instance, Candy Ofime, Amnesty International’s legal adviser on climate justice says:
“The fossil fuel industry generates enormous wealth for relatively few corporate actors and states, which have a vested interest in blocking a just transition to renewable energy, and silencing opponents. These efforts endanger everyone’s right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Fossil fuels are finite and trying to extract every last drop of oil, cubic foot of fossil gas, or tonne of coal prolongs and worsens the enormous damage they have already caused. Alternatives are at hand and renewable energy output is growing fast but much more investment is needed. COP28 must set a fast and equitable course for a sustainable future free of fossil fuels.”
There will be hundreds of fossil fuel lobbyists on hand in Dubai, and for the first time, in a move toward more transparency, they will be required to identify themselves. But the industry’s prize this year is a presiding officer, Sultan al-Jaber, who is also a government minister who heads the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. ADNOC plans to invest than $100 billion between now and 2030 on oil and gas production. That’s seven times what it plans to invest in “low-carbon” solutions. And it’s a match for what other oil companies are planning—despite what their greenwashing advertising would have you believe.
I’ll have much more to say about COP28 over the coming couple of weeks of the conference.