In the heart of coaland, the second week of COP24 is going... about as expected. Over the weekend, host country Poland refused to allow at least a dozen climate campaigners entry into the country, while a handful of countries stood in the way of a sentence that expressed the UN’s “welcome” for the IPCC 1.5 special report.
The United States joined with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to downplay how the UN would acknowledge the report the UN itself requested, instead insisting that they only “note” the report, and not endorse its findings.
Though it’s sad to see the US now partnering on international negotiations with two petro-states that murder journalists, it’s not exactly surprising. On Monday, the US held it’s pro-pollution event, praising coal and fossil fuels at a conference about finding ways to reduce fossil fuel use.
Fortunately, the panel was likely pretty ineffective at convincing anyone of anything, particularly as protestors quickly made a scene. As it turns out, a climate conference isn’t the best place to promote climate-changing fossil fuels.
One of the panelists, Steve Winberg (who “accidentally” “forgot” to sell the coal stock he owned before taking a job at DOE promoting coal), said that fossil fuel technology should be improved to give it a future. “The question is: do we continue using old coal technology used in the 1970s or move forward with new technologies which will be near-zero emitting?” Winberg mused.
The answer, of course, is yes, we should move forward with new technologies. But why pay out the nose for “near-zero” sources that may or may not ever actually work, when the actually-zero sources are already cost-competitive? (Remember, the recent coal plant regulation roll-back is based on the idea that carbon capture and sequestration isn’t commercially viable yet. So the Trump administration is claiming that near-zero emissions coal isn’t real, but also apparently saying it’s a climate solution.)
For the second year in a row now, the Trump administration held a stupid pro-coal event, and for the second year in a row protesters stole the show--literally. After the protests, the room went from tightly packed to pretty sparse. Seems like most everyone there was either a protester or journalist.
So while the protesters may not have been welcome by the pro-pollution panel, their presence sure was noted.
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