COP28: Much ado about very little

The truth is that COP28 has changed nothing. | Photo Credit: THOMAS MUKOYA

The words “transition away from fossil fuels” occurring in the decision text put out by the COP28 presidency at the climate conference seem to have generated a swell of excitement across the world.  

Indeed, it is not without basis. While the urgent need for bidding goodbye to all fossil fuels has been well-recognised, it is for the first time doing away with ‘fossil fuels’ has been formally brought onboard a decision text.  But one would have to think hard if it justifies screaming headlines like ‘historic agreement’, ‘beginning of the end of fossil fuels’ — giving the impression that rich countries have contributed something big to the cause of climate action. 

The truth is that COP28 has changed nothing. The words “transitioning away from fossil fuels” means that some people in the room have just acknowledged the presence of the elephant in the room. The elephant doesn’t go away just because people have noted that it is there.  So, where is the commitment for ‘the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era’, as the UNFCCC press release says? 

Para 28(d) of the text is loose. First of all, the paragraph “calls on the parties” to do a number of things, including “accelerating efforts towards phase-down of unabated coal” and “transitioning away from fossil fuels”. A call is not an agreement. The use of the word “efforts” in the context of unabated coal, and the words “in a just, orderly and equitable manner” for fossil fuels mean countries will make their moves on “best effort” basis. There is no hammer-nailing of any country to any commitment. In the absence of any binding commitment, platitudinous statements have little meaning. 

Nobody is cutting down fossil fuels consumption. The US consumption of natural gas in 2022 was a record 32.26 trillion cubic feet. The country’s coal consumption has been rising in the last three years — it was 594 million tonnes (mt) in 2022. India’s coal consumption is about 800 mt, but it is home to four times as many people in the US and, unlike the US, has no other energy source. As for the EU, the region’s coal production increased 2 per cent to 454 mt in 2022. Its natural gas consumption decreased in 2022, but presumably only because of the Ukraine war. 

Therefore, one should mine reality from hype. COP meetings typically end in an explosion of hype. For example, when the ‘loss and damage’ fund was set up at COP27 in Egypt last year, the reaction was euphoric, even though the fund had not a penny. And now, in COP28, pledges worth $792 million were received for the fund (to which the US, which is spending billions on the Ukraine war, has contributed $17 million), the reaction again is as though something big has happened.

When you look through the smokescreen of hype, you see that the pledges amount to nothing, compared with the requirement. In 2022, Pakistan alone suffered loss and damage of $30 billion. When the need is so huge, a fund of less than a billion dollars is like offering a banana to a hungry elephant. The need for a mechanism for financially helping a country hit by a climate event get back on its feet has been talked about since at least the Warsaw COP of 2013, when the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage was set up. Thus, the pledges received for the L&D fund are too little, very late.  

Usefulness of COP

Despite decades of negotiations, things have gotten only worse in terms of climate change. Should we hold COP meetings at all? The answer is an emphatic ‘yes’.  

At the time of the Paris conference (COP21 of 2015), the world was on a trajectory to get hotter by 4 degrees Celsius by 2100 (over the benchmark of the average temperatures of the pre-industrialisation era of 1850-1900.) Scientists have determined that up to 1.5 degrees (the “ambition”) things will be (sort of) okay; up to 2 degrees, well, we can somehow manage; but beyond 2 degrees it is really bad and gets worse all the way up.

Today, as the recent Emissions Gap Report of the United Nations Environment Programme said, the world is headed to anywhere between 2.5 degrees and 2.9 degrees, perhaps closer to the latter, which is calamitous. But the journey from 4 degrees to 2.9 could not have happened but for the COP conferences. While it is debatable as to what exactly the COPs have brought in, it is undisputable that a lot of action has happened elsewhere because of the climate alarm rung by the COP meetings.  

The hope is that things will slowly reach a tipping point soon, beyond which there will be acceleration of actions at a pace consistent with the need. Many experts believe that the “1.5 degree target” isn’t realistic anymore, the time for it has passed. The 6^th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) — a scientific body tasked with generating data for negotiations — has said that Earth is already warmer by 1.1 degrees. There isn’t much runway left.