The world has emerged from the COP26
summit in Glasgow with some sort of an agreement, albeit a seriously inadequate
one. In an echo of the Brexit process, a deal of any sort is better than no
deal at all, however marginally. In another echo of Brexit, the PM has welcomed the
deal as “a big step forward”, although even his boosterism hasn’t, so
far at least, run to proclaiming its world-beating brilliance. Whether, and to
what extent, the failure of the talks can be blamed on the host state and its
at best semi-engaged Prime Minister is a matter of opinion, but Glasgow will
certainly not go down in history as the new Paris, as he had suggested that it
would in advance.
I find myself wondering whether there will
be, in the coming weeks and months, even more echoes of Brexit. How long will
it be before the PM claims that he only signed the agreement under duress
because of time pressures; that he never understood the implications; that he
didn’t think that anyone really expected the deal to be implemented; and that
it is entirely reasonable for the UK to opt out of any bits it doesn’t like?
The difference in this case is that it won’t just be Johnson and the UK
discovering ways and excuses for not implementing even the seriously
watered-down agreement which emerged.
Whether Glasgow really was the last chance
as which it was painted is far from being as certain as many claim. One doesn’t
need to be a climate change sceptic to recognise that the relationship between
Gigatons of Carbon and degrees Celsius of global warming cannot be as precise
as some of the charts (including this one from
the BBC) would have us believe. Climate is too complex for even our very best
models to identify and give the correct weighting to every possible factor;
what we have are merely the best estimates of those who have invested their
whole careers in attempting to model the whole system. They could be wrong –
but that’s no excuse for inaction. It’s as likely that they are being
over-optimistic as that they are being over-pessimistic; the lack of the
absolute certainty which some would like to have is no reason for ignoring what
the models tell us.
It is hard for less economically advanced
states to accept curbs in their own development when the more advanced states
which have done so much to create the problems prefer to spout fine words than
take the urgent actions required. It’s worse when those richer states refuse to
provide the resources required to help them (or in the case of the host state,
actually reduce
aid
in the lead-up to the summit). Given that the two large economies which
demanded a last minute watering down of the commitment to phase out coal, India
and China, are both nuclear-armed states with advanced space programmes and
burgeoning cities, it’s easy to forget that they are also both states where a large
proportion of the population is extremely poor, and that both see rapid
economic development as a route out of that poverty. For both of them, to say
nothing of a large number of smaller countries, a demand that they find a way
of combining that economic development with a zero carbon approach, and do so
out of their own resources, is a big ask. And it’s an ask coming from places
which achieved their own relative wealth without worrying about the environmental
impact.
In a crisis which demands immediate
collective global action, any agreement which depends on individual states
taking action essentially leaves global inequality untouched. Without
addressing that issue, progress will continue to be more limited than it could
be, and needs to be. One of the simplest yet most effective steps the richest
countries in the world could take would be to dramatically increase the amount
of aid being provided to the poorest to assist them in reducing their
dependence on fossil fuels. Given that the UK, instead of leading the charge as
the host state, decided to lead the retreat by reducing aid, the chance of progress
being made on the scale required in Glasgow was hopelessly overblown from the
outset.
Whether it’s now too late to keep overall
warming down to 1.5 degrees is a matter of expert opinion, the balance of which
currently looks negative. But either way, it’s still worth doing the too little
too late which has been agreed rather than nothing, whilst continuing to press
for more.
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