Just thinking (11/26/22) — COP27 Aftermath
Reactions to the COP27 gathering in Egypt this month were wildly varied. Was it a fantastic accomplishment that will at last get the rich greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters to pay up for the harm they’ve done to the Global South? An abysmal failure because it didn’t up the ante in the life-of-death effort to get the world off coal, oil and natural gas? Or that much-lauded soft spot in between? Here are my “takeaways,” as they say:
1. It’s ridiculously hard to get everyone in the world to agree on anything, so the continual, if painfully slow, strengthening of statements from annual COP gatherings is an impressive indicator of global climate concern and determination. Each time anything is adopted at a “Committee of the Parties,” or COP gathering, every one of the nearly 200 countries that is a “party” to the 2016 Paris Treaty has to agree — or at least not disagree. This makes even vague statements of principle difficult and agreement on details of implementation impossible. That’s why the Paris Treaty is what it is: a vague statement of principles, with each “party” filling in its own details.
Thought of this way, the COP27 “loss and damage” agreement is no small thing. It calls for a fund to help pay for climate-related damages in “vulnerable” countries. Which countries contribute how much, and who gets how much are details that weren’t decided. They may never be. But a committee will work on it, and odds are something will result — something that is better than nothing.
The biggest question, lurking barely below the surface, is whether China, other relatively new heavy emitters, and rich oil exporters such as Saudi Arabia will contribute along with US, UK, EU and a few other rich countries that have been spewing out lots of GHG emissions for decades. Other questions that may burble to the surface are how much of the responsibility the rich countries can shift to international bodies such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and newer counterparts sponsored by China, and what role will be played by big private banks — which will expect, as always, to make lots of money and bear little risk.
2. It’s unfortunate, but hardly surprising or terribly important, that the COP27 statement, like the original 2016 Paris Agreement, contains no call for the “phasedown” of oil and natural gas, only coal. It’s not terribly important because everyone knows that eliminating carbon emissions requires eliminating fossil fuel use. Even oil exporting countries know this, but they have so far blocked inclusion of an explicit call for “phasedown,” for two big reasons.
First, because they want natural gas to retain the status of an acceptable bridge from coal to renewables. Second, to help in promoting “carbon capture and storage” (CCS) as a means to go on using oil and gas indefinitely by removing the carbon and burying it, often back in the rocks from which it came. It’s predictable enough: Not many countries would be willing to sign a death sentence for their overwhelmingly dominant source of national income.
Predictable and unimportant or not, the issue of whether oil and gas will be named and blamed along with coal may well develop into a fascinating power struggle in COPs-to-follow. On one side are oil exporters led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and on the other, top fossil fuel importers China and India, which happen to be both the world’s top two coal burners and vital oil customers for Saudi Arabia, the UAE — and Russia, which is keeping its head down on the climate front amid the Ukraine war. India pushed at COP27 to call for the phasedown of oil and gas alongside that for coal. The Saudis and their neighbors managed to block that. But will they want to continue slugging it out on this question if it means irritating their most important customers?
3. The “oil industry” climate activists most love to hate is the Western oil majors, but the oil industry that’s most important internationally is the Mideast Gulf nations — especially true at COP. The failure of Western oil companies to rev up production strongly in response to recent high prices demonstrates how thoroughly they have accepted the energy transition as unstoppable. While European majors such as BP, Shell and France’s Total are shifting gradually into renewables, US-based Exxon and Chevron are more inclined to join the fight to keep natural gas and implement CCS. Neither strategy is certain of success. But these companies are no longer too big to fail within the context of their larger societies. If it doesn’t work, so be it.
If the Gulf producers fail, in contrast, their world goes down with them. These countries are desperately trying to come up with a Plan B for a post-petroleum world, but the results are not very persuasive so far, particularly in the case of Saudi Arabia, which is looking mainly to tourism and a desert city that, if it is ever built, seems likely to be a huge cost center, not an alternative source of profit.
4. The important thing is what countries do, not what they say, and countries are doing more than they’re saying. The Paris Agreement became a reality because it accepted the impossibility of negotiating all the detailed steps humans need to take to limit GHG emissions and deal with the damage from climate change that could not avoided — including who pays what. Instead, countries made “pledges” that will hopefully bring the needed action before the Earth burns up.
Such pledges are convoluted combinations of aspiration and conservatism. Countries want their pledges to look impressive, because that’s prestigious. But governments also want to avoid the diplomatic embarrassment of missing targets — even while keeping their economic options open — which argues for modest pledges. It isn’t that people don’t realize that eliminating GHG emissions is vital. Many do. Maybe most. That’s the source of the prestige and the potential embarrassment. But in the meantime, each country wants to protect its own position to the maximum extent possible.
With all that operating in background, it makes little sense to expect that the pledges are going to add up to the overall reduction needed to meet a very tough, highly aspirational target of limiting warming to less than 1.5 degrees C. Luckily, important countries including China are moving faster than their pledges require. This is largely because solar and wind have become the cheapest way to generate electricity and electric automobile sales are running way ahead of projections. Then there’s the global economic slowdown, maybe even recession. There’s hope for us yet.
