COP29 starts today in Azerbaijan and will run for the next two weeks. With many global leaders absent, is this climate conference become toothless in the hopes of holding together concerted global action to address the climate crisis?
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will not be attending owing to the collapse of the German government, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also signalled her non-attendance earlier this week, citing political strategic appointments. Other notable figures not attending include France’s Emmanuel Macron, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the United States’ Joe Biden.
With President Elect Donald Trump’s known views on the climate crisis – again dismissing it as a hoax on the recent election campaign trail, it appears highly unlikely that the necessary global leadership will come from the United States in the next few years. Indeed, attendance of the USA at COP30 might be viewed as unnecessary by President Trump.
A conference mired in controversy
With the conference already mired in controversy before it begins – with the COP29 chief executive and Azerbaijan’s deputy energy minister, Elnur Soltanov, recently filmed promoting fossil fuel deals, it may be that these conferences have become more about political grandstanding, rather than meaningful action.
Ed Miliband, spoke to the Guardian about the power vacuum at COP29 this week when he said, “We will be going to COP with the power of our example to call for others to do their fair share because climate breakdown knows no borders. The UK will step up and lead – to protect our people, and play our part in securing a future for our planet.”
Climate conferences often receive a lack of focused media attention and fail to secure widespread global commitment. The recent COP16 Biodiversity meeting in Columbia ended in indecision and a lack of clear goals and received very little coverage. All this at a time when we know that biodiversity is in a freefall decline.
The positives of climate conferences can be that all the main players – those able to implement agreements – are in the same place at the same time and that those face-to-face meetings can be effective. But when, time-after-time, year-after-year, they close with a lack of decisive agreement, or are sabotaged by fossil fuel players demanding a place at the table, confidence in these conferences begins to wane.
Has COP29 failed before it has even begun?
Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, posted some frank and emotive language on social media, declaring, “The COP process is dedicated to facilitating the greatest holocaust in human history. Any organisation that participates in this process in 2024 is guilty of complicity in that holocaust – the world on fire for ever more.”
In more detail, he told Yorkshire Bylines that “We have had 10,000 science papers and 30 years of context. The problem with the liberal class is that they congratulate themselves by thinking they accept the ‘science’, while totally being in denial about the social implications, because, of course, that would expose their material privilege and social status.” He continued, “When the elites take us over 2℃ in about 10-15 years, they will create in the region of one billion refugees, 100 million of which will die or be killed, twice the number slaughtered in WW2, and then it will get worse and then it will go on forever.”
Dead in the water?
Professor Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical & climate hazards at University College London, also took to social media declaring that COP29 was dead in the water. The annual conferences have done nothing to reduce emissions, have never addressed the fossil fuel presence in the room, have allowed fossil fuel lobbyists in their thousands to attend and even facilitated fossil fuel deals.
Professor Piers Forster, the interim chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, however, told Yorkshire Bylines that the climate conferences need to be supported more now than ever, though he accepted that they are not the necessary silver bullet.
“They have been very successful and are more needed than ever in my view. The Paris Agreement made countries around the world invest in climate action and we have seen things change – we are no longer heading to a 4C warming world because of progress to date. We need them in particular because the climate does not care about where the greenhouse gases are emitted from: a factory in China or a car in the UK, so we need a mechanism to address emissions everywhere and support all countries to act. These conferences are always imperfect compromises, but to-date they have kept everyone in the tent and cooperating to a degree. We need to support them more than ever.”
3.1℃ is not an acceptable outcome
Governments have until 2025 to publish their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which will detail the intended climate actions from each country through to 2035. It is far too easy a trap for countries to pledge drastic emission reduction targets in their NDCs and then delay action. The recent UN Emissions Gap Report made this clear when it also highlighted the difference between promises and policy. It also outlined the range of expected scenarios depending on whether current policies continue or whether continuing conditional NDCs and all net-zero pledges are met a range which at its lowest end is 1.9℃ and at its highest end is an incredible 3.1℃ relative to pre-industrial levels.
Politics will likely prevail, with individual countries making statements and pledges of drastic reductions, content in the knowledge that others will not follow, so that an effective blame game can be pursued. The time has long passed to point fingers of blame. Concerted global action to meet the climate threat is urgently required.
More from Brian McHugh:
- Ripon Cathedral development plans challenged by council decision
- Alarming levels of pharmaceuticals revealed in England’s National Parks
- Perilous times on planet Earth says new climate study
