The Rad Left

2021.11.06 by Just Mason

On 31 October 2021, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), ostensibly tasked with “preventing ‘dangerous’ human interference with the climate system”, convened its twenty-sixth Conference of Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. Initially, the annual conference was supposed to happen last year, but was suspended due to the COVID-19 global pandemic (United Nations Framework on Climate Change, 2021). Previous Conferences have been criticized by climate activists for failing to secure emission reduction commitments from the world’s biggest polluters. The 2015 COP21 in Paris, for example, led to the supposedly revolutionary Paris Climate Accord. However, “the UN Environment Emissions Gap Report estimates that countries need to triple their emission reduction pledges to limit warming to the Paris goal of “well below” 2°C and increase reductions fivefold for a 1.5°C scenario” by 2100 (Lazarus et al., 2019).

COP26 was already being called the “whitest and most privileged ever” by climate activists before it had begun, thanks to the exclusion of thousands of people from the Global South. Rachel Osgood of the COP26 Coalition helps “indigenous movements, vulnerable communities, trade unionists and youth strikers” travel to COP events. She stated that around two-thirds of people were unable to make the journey due to visa issues, lack of access to vaccines, travel restrictions and accommodation costs, and so on (Taylor, 2021). Yes, even after the one-year delay, the COVID-19 pandemic still prevented many from attending. This was thanks in part to the efforts of Bill Gates and other intellectual property (IP) champions to prevent proprietary vaccines from being manufactured affordably in poor and developing nations, but that is a story for another day (Kilander, 2021).

In addition to these inauspicious beginnings, the G20 Summit had been held during the week prior to COP26, producing such performative photo-ops as the leaders of the world’s twenty largest economies tossing coins into a wishing well. Overall, the Summit boded ill for the upcoming COP, as the leaders appeared to “lack the political unity to make the ambitious decisions required to meet the moment” (Dewan, 2021). Even more galling was US President Joe Biden’s appeal to major G20 energy producers to boost production, presumably in an effort to pressure OPEC member nations to increase global fossil fuel supply. “It’s a delicate time in the global economy, and what’s important is that global energy supplies keep up with global energy demand,” said a senior administration official (Shalal & Mason, 2021).

Boris Johnson, Joe Biden & António Guterres inverclydechamber.co.uk

Thus, when Biden addressed leaders on Monday, 1 November in Glasgow, his claim that “This is the challenge of our collective lifetimes. The existential…threat to human existence as we know it.  And every day we delay, the cost of inaction increases” felt more than a little hypocritical (The White House, 2021). Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, who opened the COP26 Leaders Statement earlier the same day, stated that he was “cautiously optimistic” regarding efforts to keep global temperature rise at or below 1.5°C by 2100 (Levitt & Ambrose, 2021). This also came across as somewhat disingenuous, seeing as the recent UK budget contains certain components unfriendly to climate change, such as lowered duties on domestic flights. In fact, Finance Minister Rishi “Sunak’s budget was just the latest in a line of actions that appear to run counter to the government’s stated intentions for COP26” (Harvey & Helm, 2021). COP26 President Alok Sharma, the UK Minister of State, called the Conference the “last, best hope to keep 1.5°C in reach”, even as his own government operates as though climate change is not of the utmost urgency.

Meanwhile, leaders of nations in the Global South, though also expressing concerns over the trajectory of emissions, called on major polluters such as the US and UK to commit to specific carbon-reduction targets. Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, warned of a “death sentence” for island nations and communities that would result from even a 2°C warming scenario. “We do not want that dreaded death sentence, and we have come here today to say, ‘Try harder,’” pleaded Mottley (Epstein, 2021). Her complete address can be seen here:

By and large, the first day of COP26 was a bit of a bummer. It was marred by a lack of proportional representation, cries of desperation from those poised to experience the earliest and worst effects of climate catastrophe, and (in the words of climate activist Greta Thunberg) “empty promises” from leaders of the worst polluters.

The mood shifted slightly on Tuesday, when Biden announced “new regulatory measures to limit global methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by the end of the decade”, a plan with 90 signatory countries (Wintour, 2021). While methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO₂), it is shorter-acting, and without significant CO₂ reductions in tandem, curbing methane will not keep warming below 1.5°C. The focus on methane has long been seen by some scientists and climate activists as a way to distract from the need to reduce atmospheric CO₂ emissions, which cause much more long-term warming (Yeo, 2015).

Biden also took the opportunity to chide Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin for failing to appear at COP26, even as China’s Special Envoy Xie Zhenhua claimed to be more or less in agreement about climate targets. “The rest of the world is going to look to China and say, ‘what value added are they providing?’ And they’ve lost an ability to influence people around the world and all the people here at COP, the same way I would argue with regard to Russia,” said Biden (Kottasová et al., 2021). Again, this rhetoric comes across as fairly hypocritical from the leader of a nation that has done far less to reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to the amount it has historically generated. Not to mention that days earlier at the G20, Biden had expressed more concern over gas prices than carbon emissions.

In what seemed more like public relations than public policy, billionaire Jeff Bezos also took the stage on Tuesday to pledge $2 billion to “enhance nature” and transform food systems. The Bezos Earth Fund committed $10 billion last year, although it remains unclear how the money is being used to curb CO₂emissions, which according to scientists is still the primary goal needed to avert worst-case scenario warming. “Amazon aims to power all its operations by renewable energies by 2025,” said Bezos, who claims that the company (one of the world’s largest polluters) will be carbon-neutral by 2040 (Kulish, 2021).

Jeff Bezos knews.uk

Wednesday at COP26 was “Finance Day”, which turned out to be about as promising as it sounds. The idea was to get leaders of global financial firms to “align global assets to the landmark Paris Agreement for the first time”. UK Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, fresh off a budget campaign that scarcely mentioned climate change, claimed that firms controlling “40% of global assets would align” to the 1.5°C limit. Yet critics argued that the pledges made so far fail to “both prevent financial firms from making investments in fossil fuels and to enact reductions of absolute emissions” (Meredith, 2021).

On Thursday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced an update to its warming projections, taking into account the commitments made thus far at COP26. If all climate targets are met, on time, by all countries involved, asserts the IEA, we will be on course for 1.8°C warming by 2100. This admittedly tall order is a significant improvement over the IEA’s previous estimate of 2.1°C warming; whether such a figure is attainable, as always, relies on implementation (Birol, 2021). Adding to these targets on Thursday, twenty countries agreed to “end financing for fossil fuel projects abroad”, and twenty-three countries committed to phasing out coal (Kottasová et al., 2021). Again, such pledges fall into the necessary but not sufficient category.

On Friday, the streets of Glasgow, which had been teeming with climate activists representing a smorgasbord of global interests, spoke back. Youth demonstrators, organized by youth climate group Fridays for Future, marched to George Park in the city center. Greta Thunberg, 18-year-old figurehead of the International Youth Climate Movement, criticized the Conference as a greenwashing event: “The COP has turned into a PR event, where leaders are giving beautiful speeches and announcing fancy commitments and targets, while behind the curtains governments of the Global North countries are still refusing to take any drastic climate action” (Meredith, 2021). More of Thunberg’s speech can be seen here:

These words echo years of critiques from environmental groups, activists, and scientists about the inefficacy of prior COPs. While agreements such as those made in Glasgow are necessary, they have historically failed to be met, as leaders return to their countries and fail to pass legislation consistent with the agreements. Today, a Global Day of Action, saw protestors all around the world join those in Glasgow (250,000 of them, by some estimates) to call for immediate movement on climate policy. While these efforts have garnered a lot of media attention, it remains to be seen if they will spur world leaders (particularly those in the Global North) to action.

Swedish ecological scholar Andreas Malm believes that more must be done if we are to see the kinds of decisive, monumental actions needed to avert climate catastrophe. Addressing a crowd of demonstrators gathered in Bristol on Wednesday night, Malm said, “[t]he stakes are so high, the hour so late, and states have postponed meaningful climate action for so long, that we need to think about experimenting with more tactics than those that we have used so far, moving beyond absolutely peaceful civil disobedience”. To be clear, Malm is advocating not for violence against individuals, but against the industrial infrastructure of what he calls “Fossil Capital”. It may be time, he states, for climate activists, who almost exclusively have employed peaceful protest techniques, to “rethink their approach and embrace acts of sabotage” (Morrison, 2021).

This sentiment may seem radical, but if this is indeed the “last, best hope” for humanity, further inaction by world leaders could only be described as mass murder. The people in the streets today know that they are fighting for their future, for their very lives. With what is at stake, and the reality that business-as-usual equates to violence against the Global South, a “death sentence” for those in island nations, and the extinguishing of a livable future for the world’s youth, it would be insane to expect them to remain peaceful for much longer.

References

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Dewan, A. (2021, November 1). COP26 climate talks off to an ominous start after weak G20 leaders’ meeting. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/01/world/cop26-climate-leaders-summit-intl/index.html

Epstein, J. (2021, November 2). Powerful speech by prime minister of Barbados, under threat from rising sea levels, was a breakout moment at COP26. Business Insider India. https://www.businessinsider.in/international/news/powerful-speech-by-prime-minister-of-barbados-under-threat-from-rising-sea-levels-was-a-breakout-moment-at-cop26/articleshow/87492946.cms

Harvey, F., & Helm, T. (2021, October 31). Cop26: Boris Johnson talks the talk but can he really deliver a climate deal? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/31/cop-26-boris-johnson-climate-deal-talks-glasgow-commitment-britain-diplomacy-agreement

Kilander, G. (2021, April 26). Bill Gates under fire for saying vaccine formulas shouldn’t be shared with developing world. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bill-gates-covid-vaccines-countries-b1837884.html

Kottasová, I., Cassidy, A., & Formanek, I. (2021, November 3). COP26: 7 climate takeaways from Day 2 of the Glasgow talks. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/02/world/cop26-day-2-takeaways-intl-climate/index.html

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Kulish, N. (2021, November 5). Jeff Bezos Makes $2 Billion Environmental Pledge at COP26 Summit. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/02/world/europe/cop26-jeff-bezos-climate.html

Lazarus, M., Verkuijl, C., & Yehle, E. (2019, September 18). Closing the fossil fuel production gap – SEI. Stockholm Environment Institute. Retrieved November 6, 2021, from https://www.sei.org/publications/production-gap/

Levitt, T., & Ambrose, T. (2021, November 2). Cop26: Boris Johnson says ‘the eyes of the world are on our negotiators’ as world leaders leave climate conference – as it happened. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2021/nov/02/cop26-live-news-joe-biden-global-methane-emissions-boris-johnson-glasgow-latest

Meredith, S. (2021, November 3). Flagship finance pledges at COP26 criticized for ‘missing the point’ on fossil fuels. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/03/cop26-climate-finance-pledges-missing-the-point-on-fossil-fuels.html

Meredith, S. (2021, November 5). ‘COP26 is a failure’: Greta Thunberg says climate summit has turned into a PR event. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/05/greta-thunberg-says-cop26-climate-summit-is-a-failure-and-a-pr-event.html

Morrison, S. (2021, November 5). Andreas Malm: ‘Why climate activists should engage in acts of sabotage’. The Bristol Cable. https://thebristolcable.org/2021/11/cop-26-climate-protest-bristol-andreas-malm-why-climate-activists-should-engage-in-sabotage/

Shalal, A., & Mason, J. (2021, October 30). Biden pushes G20 energy producing countries to boost production. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/biden-push-g20-energy-producers-boost-capacity-ease-price-pressures-2021-10-30/

Taylor, M. (2021, October 30). Cop26 will be whitest and most privileged ever, warn campaigners. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/30/cop26-will-be-whitest-and-most-privileged-ever-warn-campaigners

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The White House. (2021, November 01). Remarks by President Biden at the COP26 Leaders Statement. The White House. Retrieved November 06, 2021, from https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/11/01/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-cop26-leaders-statement/

Wintour, P. (2021, November 2). Biden unveils pledge to slash global methane emissions by 30%. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/02/joe-biden-plan-cut-global-methane-emissions-30-percent

Yeo, S. (2015, May 28). Cutting soot and methane distracts from 2C goal, says Oxford scientist. Carbon Brief. Retrieved November 06, 2021, from https://www.carbonbrief.org/cutting-soot-and-methane-distracts-from-2c-goal-says-oxford-scientist