Opinion: Will COP26 be yet another Cop-out?

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (Opinion) At the 1992 “Earth Summit” held in Rio de Janeiro and known here as “Eco-92”, 154 countries agreed to adopt the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Convention took effect in 1994.

The top decision-making body of the UNFCCC is called the Conference of the Parties, abbreviated COP, and meets annually to assess progress in dealing with climate change.

COP25 was held in Madrid, in December 2019, 25 years after the UNFCCC became law. Originally scheduled to take place in Brazil, a new venue had to be chosen in early 2019 after Jair Bolsonaro, a climate change sceptic, took office as President. Chile volunteered to host the event, but withdrew after violent domestic troubles made it unsafe.

COP26 should have been held in late 2020, but was postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the run-up to this year’s Glasgow summit, there were inordinately great expectations, amid numerous warnings that this was the last chance to save mankind from self-destruction.

Why all the hullaballoo and foofaraw now, when it has generally been acknowledged that only two COPs – COP3, where the Kyoto Protocol was adopted and COP21 where the Paris Climate Accords were signed – have created anything significant?

Could it be that October 2021 was the first time the Nobel Prize recognized climate change as a physical science?  This year’s Physics Prize went to two professors of meteorology, Tsukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann, “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming.”

Could it be that during the past two years, during the pandemic, weather patterns have changed so drastically that the average man-on-the-street has now begun to believe that climate change is really happening? [Manabe’s and Hasselmann’s predictions, made in the 1970’s, have largely been borne out 50 years later.]

Or, could it be simple desperation? The Kyoto Protocol was rejected by the U.S. and has not yet taken effect. Moreover, the Paris Agreement, calling for reducing output of greenhouse gases (GHG), and signed by all 197 UN member states, is not legally binding.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has summarized this desperate outlook, saying in essence, “If commitments fall short by the end of this COP, countries must revisit their plans every year until 1.5°C is assured, fossil fuel subsidies end, carbon has a price, and coal is phased out.”

The commitments made to date are anodyne at best: (i) Forests and Land Use, in which 110 countries aim to end deforestation by 2030; and (ii) Global Methane Pledge – with nearly 90 members – to reduce methane emissions by 30% below 2020 levels by 2030.

Is there anyone who believes that Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, or Nigeria, are going to end deforestation by 2030? Cut down fewer trees, perhaps, but “end”?

Is there anyone who believes that methane emissions can be reduced by 30% in 8 years? Methane comes from cattle and car fuel. India is not going to cull its sacred cows; Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Australia and the U.S. are not going to cull 30% of their animal protein herds.

Is there anyone who believes that, in the short to medium term, as Guterres wants, 1.5°C will be assured, fossil fuel subsidies will end, carbon will have a price, and coal will be phased out?

Is there anyone who believes that, somehow, a technological deus ex machina – Blockchain? Metaverse? AI? 5G?  – will appear on the scene to rescue us all?

So, in the end, what will COP26 accomplish, other than offer a platform to mendacious politicians from around the world, who will spout ever more empty rhetoric?

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenage media darling, rightly says all the COPs have produced so far is “blah, blah, blah”.  COP26 promises more of the same, only louder.

In other words, just another COP-out.