Cop27 gathers amid indications our climate is breaking down

Were it not for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the biggest geopolitical issue disrupting the lives of global citizens this year would unquestionably be a rapidly worsening climate crisis.

Yet living at a time of planetary overheating caused by human activities and burning of fossil fuels continues to evoke a strange mix of indifference or of growing but mild anxiety.

It is typified by feelings such as: nothing can be done; it’s not going to be so bad for us, or we don’t understand unfolding complexities but we should be doing something about it. All told, far from an emergency response. This year is showing consequences are more devastating and more frequent, exactly as scientists predicted.

[ Why is Ireland experiencing unusually warm weather? ]

Dr Bríd Walsh of Stop Climate Chaos has provided a timely reality check: “This year the climate crisis brought historic levels of rain, heat, drought, fires and storms impacting almost every part of the world. Flooding in Pakistan killed more than 1,500 people and displaced tens of millions. In the Horn of Africa millions are starving due to an extreme drought. In China, drought has caused power outages, rationing and food supply issues, while Europe experienced its worst drought in 500 years. All of this in the space of the last nine months.”

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Appearing before the Oireachtas Climate Action Committee, she was calling for “higher ambition” to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees at Cop27 – the chaotic but essential United Nations process for agreeing climate actions, opening in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt, this weekend. That temperature target is the Paris Agreement’s key goal; go beyond it and impacts become less controllable and increasingly catastrophic.

Cop27′s prospects were being viewed with rising concern in recent months. Fallout from the Ukraine war, the compounding energy, food price and cost-of-living crises, and a distinct chill in relations between the United States and China were not good for mood music.

Despite “last chance saloon” hype at Cop26 in Glasgow last year, its weak outcome means 197 participating countries are failing to “keep 1.5 degrees alive” – too many have not strengthened targets as promised under nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

[ The Irish Times view on Cop26: imperfect progress ]

That backdrop has become dire with the latest reports from UN agencies indicating we are facing temperature rise of 2.5 degrees plus this century, while greenhouse gases are currently at record levels in the atmosphere.

Guardian analysis suggested we are close to irreversible climate breakdown. Climate activist Lorna Gold tweeted in response: “It is devastating to read this. We need to be devastated, to hold each other tight in that pain – and allow that to move us to a new level of collective intention and action.”

As usual, too little too late is the most benign way of describing the collective response. Yet there are indications of defiant progress, which Cop27 can build upon.

In a formidable essay in Intercept Naomi Klein observed the extent to which some governments are finally introducing meaningful climate legislation “that is bound up with the political freedoms that are not yet eroded”.

Europe has been complacent and lazy and now the chickens are coming home to roost: we either decarbonise fast, or we expose ourselves to economic meltdown due to power shortages

For the first time in 27 years of UN-led climate negotiations, the world’s largest historic greenhouse gas polluter will come to the table with a national law in place for reducing its outsize emissions from burning fossil fuels.

“The US Senate and the Biden administration have been dragged kicking and screaming into passing the Inflation Reduction Act – flawed as it is ... This didn’t happen because they suddenly saw the climate light,” she said.

“It happened as a direct result of public pressure, investigative journalism, civil disobedience, sit-ins in legislative offices, lawsuits and every other tool available in the nonviolent arsenal. And, ultimately, lawmakers got it together to pass the act because they feared what would happen when they faced voters in November if they came to them empty-handed. If US politicians did not have to fear the public, because the public had a greater fear of them, none of this would have happened at all.”

Energy crisis upside?

On whether the Ukraine war has derailed the climate agenda or helped scale-up of renewable energy globally, the jury is still out.

“War does no good to the environment ... Yes, it has shone a light on Europe’s energy dependencies with despotic regimes. It has brought the twin aims of energy security and decarbonisation together in a most urgent fashion,” acknowledges Sadhbh O’Neill, a researcher in climate politics. “But the global response outside of Europe is one of increasing energy nationalism – just look at the UK’s response; and they used to be climate leaders! – that some are referring to as a fossil fuel ‘gold rush’.”

There will likely be an uptick in fossil fuel exploration as countries seek to secure their own reliable sources of fossil energy. “It has led to a resurgence in demand for LNG [liquefied natural gas] which, as we know, has terrible consequences for climate.”

It is also worth remembering how dependent Europe is on imports from China for other key minerals and resources to build out renewables, O’Neill adds. “Europe has been complacent and lazy and now the chickens are coming home to roost: we either decarbonise fast, or we expose ourselves to economic meltdown due to power shortages.”

Some governments and businesses are scrambling to find other sources of fossil fuels rather than using the crisis as opportunity to speed up transitioning away from fossil fuels, says climate policy expert Prof Diarmuid Torney of DCU. “This is fundamentally the wrong approach, from my perspective. The wider challenge is that, historically, climate change has tended to slip off the policy agenda when other crises emerge, and I think that is at least to some extent happening at the moment.”

Energy security is not climate security, according to Prof Paul Patrick Walsh, vice-president of education at the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, who is based in UCD.

“We will see a move to fossil fuel to address shortages in the short run,” he predicts. “Nation states should see renewables and sustainable food production as a better way to be food and energy secure in the medium term.”

[ Pilita Clark: No need for defeatism on climate change ]

Some may see grid, cables and pipes between nations as a security threat; “better to be self-sufficient on an island”. The only problem with that approach is global co-operation is needed to make food systems sustainable and renewable energy viable for eight to nine billion people on the planet, Walsh adds.

He believes escalating military and security spending to €20 trillion a year is not going to help finance these transitions. Moreover, “no nation or bloc can go alone. We share one ocean, one atmosphere and one food system whether we like it or not. The only way forward to protect these with peace and multilateralism around achieving the SDGs [sustainable development goals].”

That especially means SDG 13 – tackling climate change urgently. So it all comes back to Cop27.

It is a matter of climate justice that richer countries including Ireland support the development of this third pillar of finance under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

It will not, however, deliver a historic deal hammered out over long days in the negotiating room with wrestling over a text and last-minute drama. There are no big working programmes to be got over the line. The Paris rule book is in place, it is now down to implementation. It will be outside this process that commitments can be reinforced and actions scaled up – by big alliances between countries, cities, civil society groups and the business world.

In the negotiating rooms three issues will be significant in determining Cop27′s outcome:

· The mitigation work programme; a critical forum to facilitate halving of emissions this decade;

· Making the “Santiago Network” operational to help avert, minimise and address loss and damage; climate-related disasters which are so extreme no protection against them is possible;

· Agreement on the way forward on finance for loss and damage; how wealthy countries support climate-vulnerable developing countries.

Loss and damage is so fraught with difficulties exchanges between rich and poor countries risk deteriorating into a blame game, but there are indications of willingness to make progress. Walking away without that from an African Cop, on a continent where climate impacts are often devastating and leading to starvation and mass migration, would amount to a big failure.

The issue is endlessly complicated, according to Dr Sinéad Walsh, climate director with the Department of Foreign Affairs. “There is no one silver bullet that’s going to sort out loss and damage,” she told a DCU Centre for Climate and Society webinar on Cop27.

It has to address Pakistan disasters; slow-onset disasters such as sea-level rise and Horn of Africa droughts; and non-economic impacts including culture and heritage. “There are so many different kinds of loss and damage,” she added. While it is a big priority for Ireland at Cop27, there will be no simple solution to sort that out.

“Loss and damage speaks to the heart of climate injustice,” according to Siobhán Curran, head of policy and advocacy with Trócaire. While the poorest countries in the world who have contributed least to the climate crisis are experiencing large losses and damage from climate impacts, they are being left to pay for a crisis not of their making.

“This is diverting much-needed public finance for sustainable development into dealing with crises and is pushing countries further into debt. It is a matter of climate justice that richer countries including Ireland support the development of this third pillar of finance under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

[ Kilimanjaro among major glaciers set to disappear by 2050, UN report finds ]

Cop27 is a moment for Ireland to show global leadership, solidarity and political will by supporting loss and damage as a permanent agenda item and backing the establishment of a loss and damage finance facility, she adds.

Some campaigners consider such a facility to be more reliable, as it would ask for money from rich countries based on a formula which works out what they owe – and would be less dependent on the whims of wealthy countries. Opponents say it would take a long time to set up and would still not be able to force rich countries to give money to it.

Cop27 hopes

More commitments to regional and global co-operation across policy, finance and technology are needed, Prof Walsh underlines: “Our geopolitics around nuclear conflict is seen as the threat to life on this planet. Yet, unmitigated climate change is equally problematic. This needs peace and a global approach to sustainable development. However impossible this seems, we all need to work towards these. There is no other way.”

O’Neill hopes the Egyptian presidency, which has considerable diplomatic might, will live up to its claim that this will be an “African Cop”, and ensure financial commitments made by developed countries are delivered. They should start, she says, by releasing many thousands of political prisoners jailed for speaking out against the current Al-Sisi regime, she says. Cops are traditionally a platform for huge protests outside the venue.

“I hope that there will be some new financial instrument to support loss and damage ... I look forward to some strong language welcoming the latest IPCC AR6 [a global assessment by scientists] but of course no matter how strong the language is, countries can simply carry on as usual. The same goes for the Cop26 methane pledge driven by the US and China.”

The climate issue has been the one bright light between US and China, greatly helped by US climate envoy John Kerry’s good working relationship with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua. The duo could, against the odds, shape the political dynamic and push through meaningful progress on climate finance and methane.

The best outcome, O’Neill says, will be one where civil society is mobilised and pressurising governments to demonstrate that they are upholding their commitment to the 1.5/2 degree target with commensurate NDCs and long-term strategies, as well as climate finance.

But she fears this Cop could actually take us a step backwards. The invasion of Ukraine has focused minds on energy security but not necessarily on climate change. The warnings of catastrophic tipping points, and news of unprecedented biodiversity loss means at this stage, “the global community needs to be pulling the ‘emergency brake’ – as Greta Thunberg says”.

[ Opinion: Increasingly absurd climate protests show how society has failed younger generation ]

What would that look like? “New legal instruments to ban fossil fuel exploration is the only credible response, along with measures to hold the political leaders criminally responsible for the threats to indigenous communities and forest loss in the Amazon.”

It should include “other good things that won’t happen”, O’Neill says, such as mandatory financial contributions to support mitigation, and adaptation and loss and damage for developing countries; legal limits on a percentage of a country’s emissions that can be mitigated offshore using article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Some people think this can’t be done over the next eight years. But we can’t just throw up our hands and say we failed before we have even really tried

There is big backing too for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty but it will not be on the agenda; too many big economies are ploughing billions into fossil fuel projects and don’t want to be backed into a corner. That does not mean it should not be pushed at every opportunity. There are lessons from loss and damage. It has moved from being a peripheral issue to main agenda and now is at the heart of Cop deliberations – a potential trust builder between climate vulnerable countries and big carbon polluting economies.

Destabilising confluence

The UN’s 2022 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction highlights the increasing probability of civilisational collapse. Escalating synergies between disasters, economic vulnerabilities and ecosystem failures are escalating the risk of a “global collapse” scenario.

Yet as Greta Thunberg said in The Climate Book, many people still think of climate change as “a slow, linear and even rather harmless process”.

“The climate is not just changing. It is breaking down ... We are entering a new era of more dramatic change,” she added. “At the very least, we need our leaders to start including all our actual emissions in our targets, statistics and policies. Before they do that, any mention of vague, future goals is nothing but a distracting waste of time.”

She declared there was just too much at stake for us to place our destiny in the hands of undeveloped technologies, such as carbon capture, and “we need real zero” – aka emission cuts, not greenwashing versions of carbon offsets.

Governments may say they are doing all they can but her advice is “don’t fall for it – then we might still have time to turn thing around”.

Thunberg is not attending Cop27, having dismissed it as a forum for “greenwashing” with unacceptable restrictions on civil society.

[ Temperatures in Europe have increased more than twice global average - report ]

US climatologist Michael Mann is in the “there’s progress but it needs to be built on” camp: “More work clearly needs to be done if warming is to be kept below 1.5, but nobody foresaw the major policy progress in recent months in both Australia and the US. It is estimated that the US legislation will lower national emissions by 40 per cent this decade. With US leadership, we can expect other major emitters to now come to the table at Cop27.”

But there is a horrible emerging view that containing temperature rise to 1.5 degrees is probably beyond reach. A collective failure to halve emissions by 2030 looms. So how do you motivate the world do the right thing amid that gross failure?

UN Environment Programme director Inger Andersen alluded to this after publication of its definitive “emissions gap” report: “If we are serious about climate change, we need to kick-start a system-wide transformation, now. We need a root-and-branch redesign of the electricity sector, of the transport sector, of the building sector and of food systems. And we need to reform financial systems so that they can bankroll the transformations we cannot escape.”

Tellingly, she added: “Some people think this can’t be done over the next eight years. But we can’t just throw up our hands and say we failed before we have even really tried. We must try, because every fraction of a degree matters: to vulnerable communities, to those that are yet to be connected to the electricity grid, to species and ecosystems and to every one of us.”

Even if we don’t get everything in place by 2030, she contended, we will be setting up the foundation for a carbon-neutral future; “one that will allow us to bring down temperature overshoots and deliver other benefits, like green jobs, universal energy access and clean air”.

Cop27 somehow has to get that difficult message across and provide the assurance of tangible progress while resisting backsliding by countries and companies fudging on their net-zero targets and fallback towards fossil fuels because of Russia’s war in Ukraine.