Opinion: COP26 lacked the aggression necessary to fight climate change
The UN’s Conference on Climate Change, COP26, took place from October 31st, 2021 to November 13th in Glasgow, Scotland. All eyes were on the 120 leaders meeting at the event to produce a global commitment to fight climate change, specifically with the goal of preventing global temperatures from increasing 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial temperature levels. Following the conference and the finalized Pact, however, many people, including myself, were disappointed with the end result.
The Glasgow Climate Pact stated a goal of “reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2010 level and to net zero around mid-century.” Let’s focus on the “net zero” aspect, or the idea that countries will balance their carbon emissions by taking actions to remove carbon from the atmosphere, like planting more trees.
Data from NASA recently revealed that global temperatures in 2021 were about 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the pre-industrial averages. When the climate crisis is this pressing, how can COP26 simply set the bar at net zero? On such a large scale and in the short-term, common solutions associated with net zero like installing solar panels for clean energy and the aforementioned planting of trees are expensive and take time to significantly impact on the environment. In addition, how can we wait until 2050? By that point, scientists have predicted that global temperatures will have surpassed the 1.5 degree Celsius limit this agreement strives to prevent, and will have warmed on average 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 2 degrees Celsius.
Reaching net zero is important, but it’s even more important to address the burning of fossil fuels and consumer culture in high-emitting, wealthy nations. With the convenience of two-day shipping from Amazon, promotion of cheaply-made, unethically produced products from overseas, and our intensive use of technology, it makes sense that the U.S. has a huge emissions impact per capita. The cost associated with our normalization of buying new shiny things and throwing away the old but usable goods ends up being paid by the environment and less developed countries. At the very least, wealthy first-world countries like the United States (the second largest emitter in the world) should use their resources to reach net zero much sooner than 2050.
Regarding emissions, the conference also failed to make significant progress in phasing out coal as an energy source; instead, they used language supporting a “phase-down” in usage. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel — emitting about 1.5 times the amount of carbon dioxide as diesel fuel, the next dirtiest — so it is no surprise that coal is the single largest contributor to rising temperatures globally. A “phase-down” in coal burning is better than nothing, but it’s not enough to simply mitigate the effects of our most significant polluter — we must completely eliminate it.
The U.S. has a special stake in this topic as the world’s third-largest coal consumer. In fact, according to the US Energy Information Administration, coal-fired power has increased in 2021 due to the rising prices of natural gas. Despite the U.S.’s key role in burning coal and thus exacerbating climate change, it did not join the 40 countries at COP26 that pledged to end domestic coal power use by 2040. (Note: the United States did agree to stop funding gas, oil, and coal overseas).
This was a major missed opportunity for the United States. It isn’t a complete surprise that the U.S. has failed to take aggressive action— fossil fuel companies and CEOs spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress each year, and many Republican legislators still deny climate change is real or a priority. Because of these obstacles, the U.S. is on a path to change that’s much too slow, sacrificing our climate for the sake of profit. With our country’s resources and technology, we should be moving towards clean energy — leaving coal and all of its negative impacts on people and the environment behind. It’s also a clear example of the work that still needs to be done after COP26. Clearly, many governments. including our own, still aren’t convinced to take action towards even the less ambitious goals of the climate movement.
Ultimately, COP26 brought more global awareness to the current state of our climate crisis, but fell short of delivering the immediate action our society needs to stand a chance in our fight against global warming. There’s no real incentive or enforcement to ensure countries follow through on the Glasgow agreement, and not much immediate change has occurred due to the goal deadlines being set for decades from now. Hopefully, some of these issues will be addressed thoroughly and seriously at COP27 in Egypt in 2022.
Sources: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/cop26-ends-agreement-falls-short-climate-action
https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cma2021_L16_adv.pdf
https://www.clientearth.org/latest/latest-updates/stories/fossil-fuels-and-climate-change-the-facts/
https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/cop26-climate-outcomes-successes-failures-glasgow
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/18/business/coal-power-climate-crisis/index.html
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/12/16/buying-stuff-drives-climate-change/
