The COP-out in Glasgow (Week 2)
2021.11.13 by Just Mason
The first week of COP26 was characterized by the divide between the Global North and South, the exclusion of those most vulnerable to climate change from policy decisions, and continued inaction by the world’s worst polluters. The second week has helped to clarify the roots of those problems, as leaders of developed nations continued to make excuses and lay blame at each other’s doorsteps, while those in developing nations pleaded for action.
Former US President Barack Obama took the stage on Monday, 8 November as world leaders and lawmakers, business leaders, stakeholders, and activists met in Glasgow, Scotland to conclude the UN Climate Summit. Obama’s speech garnered widespread criticism for defending incrementalism, blaming Russia and China, and suggesting that the inaction of the United States has been due not to a failure of leadership, but a failure of popular pressure. Addressing youth climate activists, Obama claimed that whether sufficient action is taken to curb emissions “to a large degree is going to depend on you”. The words rang hollow coming from the former President who, despite strong public support, failed to take meaningful action on climate. In fact, Obama green lit more new oil drilling projects than his predecessor, George W. Bush, and presided over a “750% explosion in crude oil exports”, for which he later proposed we should “say thank you” (Aronoff, 2021).
Many climate activists, including Asad Rehman of the COP26 Coalition, have compared this year’s Summit to the disastrous COP15 held in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009. COP15, billed as “humanity’s last and best chance to prevent the worst of what the climate crisis had in store”, was similarly cost-prohibitive for many from the Global South, and the agreements reached were widely criticized as insufficient (Meredith, 2021). In addition, it was later revealed that Obama’s National Security Agency (NSA) had spied on multiple world leaders during the Summit, keeping US negotiators up to date on the goals and strategies of the other nations. Whether the clearly illegal tactics affected the outcome of Copenhagen has yet to be determined (Vidal & Goldenberg, 2014).
One of the dominant narratives emerging out of the second week has been the outrage over the US military. Generating more greenhouse gas emissions than 140 countries combined, the US war machine has long been exempt from climate agreements such as COP26 (Neimark et al., 2019). Meanwhile, Congress just increased the Pentagon’s budget, even as it was whittling down the climate provisions in Biden’s Build Back Better agenda (which critics such as Senators Manchin and Sinema insist is still too expensive). A report last week helps shed some light on exactly why Congress continues to fund the world’s largest polluter while refusing to enact strong climate policies: Sludge reported that “at least 28 U.S. senators own investments in the fossil fuel industry worth as much as a combined $12.6 million” (Moore & Shaw, 2021).
On Tuesday, Journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other US lawmakers on the military budget. Martin asked, “how can we possibly talk about net zero if there is this bipartisan consensus to constantly expand this large contributor to climate change?”. Representative Frank Pallone, Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, stepped in to say, “I don’t see…increasing the defense budget as being something that’s inconsistent with climate action”. Pelosi then defended the budget increase by citing the military’s own claims that climate change will increase the need for military spending (Hertsgaard, 2021). See the video here:
In a rare case of a developed nation taking responsibility, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon declared Thursday that the nation would double its commitment to climate reparations, from £1 million to £2 million. Sturgeon’s announcement followed an evocative statement by Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate during a panel discussion. The First Minister went on to urge other developed nations to meet the $100 billion climate reparations pledge, adding that there was “no excuse for not achieving” the target. “It was made 12 years ago, it will be shameful if we come out of this COP without that commitment being met,” Sturgeon said (Garton-Crosbie, 2021). Nakate’s statement can be seen here:
By the end of the two-week conference, the hopes of significantly shifting away from a fossil fuel driven global economy were thoroughly dashed. The desperate pleas of the world’s most vulnerable communities were drowned out by the finger-pointing and self-congratulating of the leaders of developed nations, even as climate reparations remain unpaid and emissions reduction targets unmet. Perhaps the best encapsulation of the second week of COP26 came when the language of the draft deal was changed from phasing out coal and fossil fuel subsidies to phasing out “unabated” coal and “inefficient” subsidies. The addition of such ambiguous terms makes these parts of the agreement essentially meaningless. “[A]ll told, the agreements coming out of COP26 may shave just 0.1 degree Celsius off of future warming”, keeping our trajectory around 2.6–2.7℃ warming by 2100 (Wallace-Wells, 2021).
Asad Rehman of the COP26 Coalition summarized the monumental failures of the latest Climate Summit on Democracy Now on Friday, saying the so-called Glasgow pact “does not keep us below the 1.5 degree guard rail. In fact, it heads us closer to 3 degrees, where governments turn their backs on the poorest and the most vulnerable in the world, unable to even meet the paltry $100 billion. They’re ramming through so many loopholes that it makes a mockery of these climate negotiations” (Democracy Now!, 2021). The interview can be seen here:
It is clearer now than ever that the leaders of the world’s worst polluters, regardless of public pressure, will not act to stem the tide of the catastrophic climate crisis. It is difficult to see Joe Biden, António Guterres, Boris Johnson, and the others in the Global North, with their “empty words and promises”, as anything other than a public relations agency representing the very entities causing the climate crisis. If the human species is to secure a liveable future, free from the military-industrial complex of fossil capital and the global militarism which enables it, with climate justice for all, we must secure it ourselves.
References
Aronoff, K. (2021, November 10). Barack Obama has a nerve preaching about the climate crisis. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/10/barack-obama-climate-crisis-cop26-speech
Democracy Now! (2021, November 12). Democracy Now! Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2021/11/12/walkout_at_un_climate_summit_cop26
Garton-Crosbie, A. (2021, November 11). COP26: “No excuse” not to meet $100bn pledge, says Nicola Sturgeon. The National. https://www.thenational.scot/news/19711796.cop26-no-excuse-not-meet-100bn-pledge-says-nicola-sturgeon/
Hertsgaard, M. (2021, November 9). Who is the world’s greatest climate champion? The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/cop26-glasgow-pelosi/
Meredith, S. (2021, November 5). The COP26 climate summit is drawing parallels to the disastrous Copenhagen meeting of 2009. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/05/cop26-climate-summit-why-glasgow-is-drawing-parallels-to-copenhagen.html
Moore, D. (2021, November 5). Senators cling to fossil fuel stocks as world heats up. Sludge. https://readsludge.com/2021/11/05/senators-cling-to-fossil-fuel-investments-as-world-heats-up/
Neimark, B. (2019, June 24). US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries — shrinking this war machine is a must. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-than-as-many-as-140-countries-shrinking-this-war-machine-is-a-must-119269
Vidal, J., & Goldenberg, S. (2014, January 30). Snowden revelations of NSA spying on Copenhagen climate talks spark anger. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/30/snowden-nsa-spying-copenhagen-climate-talks
Wallace-Wells, D. (2021, November 12). The new politics of climate hyperbole. Intelligencer. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/at-cop26-hyperbole-and-inertia.html