The 26th United Nations conference on Climate, COP26, is scheduled to happen in Glasgow in early November. “COP” stands for “Conference of the Parties”. The goals as stated by the UK organizers of this edition are:
The COP26 summit will bring parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The UK is committed to working with all countries and joining forces with civil society, companies and people on the frontline of climate change to inspire climate action ahead of COP26.
Previous COP meetings have largely been failures.
This article is intended as an inoculation against what may be reported in the press about COP26 over the next few months.
The only COP of note happened 2015, which resulted in “The Paris Accord”, a completely toothless document wherein the countries pinky swear to come out with self-determined goals for how much they will reduce their Carbon emissions, with no requirement to actually do anything. COP26 wants to ‘accelerate action’ toward these Paris ‘goals’. This sounds pretty nebulous.
The organizers prepared a pretty color brochure “COP26 Explained” full of encouraging but empty words from various people. You can get it here. It is mostly about “we have to work together” and “money for developing countries”.
Boris Johnson gets the first page:
“Securing a brighter future for our children and future generations requires countries to take urgent action at home and abroad to turn the tide on climate
change. It is with ambition, courage and collaboration as we approach the crucial COP26 summit in the UK that we can seize this moment together, so we can recover cleaner, rebuild greener and restore our planet.”
That is all he says, next to a color picture of himself, on a whole page.
It is convenient for The Powers That Be that COP26 is scheduled for Great Britain and not some place like Greece, Turkey, Northern California, or Germany, where the ravages of climate change are visible right out the window.
#MINDTHEGAP
There are pages of puff about what the UK is doing. Planting trees. Announcing the end of sales of new fossil-fueled cars by 2030. “We will end direct government support for the fossil fuel energy sector overseas.” Note the careful use of the words “will”, “direct”, and “overseas”.
Alok Sharma is UK climate chief and the “President” of the COP26 meeting and has a lot more to say; he gets a full page of text. But do not trust this guy:
It is all window dressing and posturing while they dig the hole deeper and position COP26 as a big public relations event for Britain. Color pictures of windmills abound, but it bears stressing that building windmills does not decrease Carbon emissions. The only thing that reduces Carbon emissions is to actually reduce Carbon emissions. Banning the sales of fossil-fueled cars by 2030 is not at all the same as cutting emissions in half by the same date. Politicians can’t do simple math, it seems.
The UK is far ahead of the US by most metrics: Annual CO2 emissions in the UK are 6 Tons per person whle in the US it is 16 Tons per person. The UK gets 42% of its electricity from ‘clean’ sources while in the US the figure is only 20% renewable. Both countries get about 20% from nuclear. 59% of US electricity comes from either coal (19%) or Natural Gas (40%) while in the UK it is 2% coal and 37% Natural Gas.
The US representatives are in no position to criticize their British hosts, after the Administration approved new oil and gas drilling on public lands faster than Donald Trump did, and encouraged Saudi Arabia to pump faster. The large infrastructure bill currently being discussed in the US Congress also does nothing to cut emissions, falling into the same trap of just pushing new projects.
“Higher gasoline costs, if left unchecked, risk harming the ongoing global recovery.” — US National Security advisor Jake Sullivan
Just making it clear where their priorities are. So much for a Carbon Tax too I guess.. It sounds like the US National Security people and the US Domestic Climate people are not on the same page. The US goal for car sales, just announced by Domestic Climate czar Gina McCarthy (from the NRDC), is even weaker than Britain’s, wanting only half of new car sales to be electric by 2030 and 100% by 2035.
Maybe they are misreading the general public. The following survey was taken in the Spring of 2021, before the fires and flooding this Summer:
Humans ‘pushing Earth close to tipping point’, say most in G20
Global survey finds 74% also want climate crises and protecting nature prioritised over jobs and profit
“People in power seem to feel it is OK to fell old trees or destroy natural ecosystems for buildings or roads, or to dig up oil, so long as they then plant new trees. But this approach is not working, and the findings in this report show that many people no longer support such economic idiocy.”
How fast to cut
One page in the brochure lists what COP26 needs to achieve:
- SECURE GLOBAL NET ZERO BY MID-CENTURY AND KEEP 1.5 DEGREES WITHIN REACH.
- ADAPT TO PROTECT COMMUNITIES AND NATURAL HABITATS.
- MOBILISE FINANCE.
- WORK TOGETHER TO DELIVER.
Any mention of “Net Zero” is suspect — when politicians use that phrase they are counting on CO2 absorbtion technologies that simply do not exist. It is magical thinking, kicking the can down the road. Some countries use “net zero” to mean that they are emitting less because they have shifted their pollution to somewhere else.
Of course, reaching the 1.5 degree goal is already unlikely, as the brochure says itself: “We have made progress in recent months to bend the temperature curve closer to 2 degrees; but the science shows that much more must be done to keep 1.5 degrees in reach.”
Note the diagram to the right showing various scenarios and compare the steepness of the descending curves to our behavior over the last 20 years.
“COP26 is an opportunity for countries to update their plans for reducing emissions”. (China’s position on that is “we will do something by 2050 but we aren’t saying what.”)
Several times the brochure talks about closing down coal production, while forgetting to mention Natural Gas: “While targets are important, they must translate into action, fast. Which is why developed countries must rapidly phase out coal power, and all countries should commit to not opening or financing any new coal-fired power stations across the world.” It is pretty clear that COP26 management has been captured by the Natural Gas industry — remember that 37% of UK electricity comes from gas and they seem to be in no hurry to reduce that.
Much mention is made of improving “resilience”. Sir David Attenborough gets a page to talk about getting schools and religious groups involved and understand what the meeting is for.
It goes on like this for 25 pages.
- “We want to deliver”
- “Inaction is not an option”
- “This is the investment opportunity of our lifetime”, says Michelle Scrimgeour, chief financial officer, legal & general investment management, co-chair, COP26 business leaders group. (I think I threw up a little in my mouth reading that.)
- “Non-state actors can also join the Race to Resilience, the UN High Level Climate Champions’ global campaign to encourage businesses, investors, cities, and civil society to take action to strengthen the resilience of people from vulnerable groups and communities to climate risks.”
- “Race to Zero is the world’s largest net zero alliance, with over 3,800 members, representing over 15% of the global economy, 1 billion people, and 21% of the world’s biggest companies.”
They sure put a lot of effort into those glossy web sites that nobody will read, but I could not find any mention in them of shutting down oil refineries or gas wells. Nowhere are scientists mentioned as giving presentations. It is pretty much a math-free zone.
Nowhere does it talk about how anyone plans to cut emissions or by how much. “Discouraging banks from financing fossil development” is not quite the same thing as closing oil refineries by government edict because it would be, ya know, in the public interest.
They list a lot of local efforts around the world, each of which sounds promising. But to see the scope of the problem, I just looked up US car sales. In 2019, 325,000 EVs were sold in the US, half of which were a single model, the Tesla Model 3. But total car sales were over 17 Million. So EV sales account for just under 2%l.
Nobody is paying attention. In particular, the MSM is not paying attention. Gas-powered SUVs are still being advertised on TV. Motor Trend magazine is still sold without shame over the counter in shops.
Corporate Sponsors
The COP26 web page has a list of various corporations that are involved in this meeting. The list includes Unilever (food and personal grooming), Microsoft, Hitachi (who makes just about everything), Sky (a TV entertainment service), NatWest (a bank), GSK (pharma, including mRNA vaccines), Reckitt (maker of Lysol and Woolite among other household products. Reckitt is the ‘official hygiene partner’ of COP26. I am not making this up.), and several energy companies: NationalGrid, SSE, and ScottishPower. All of these energy companies are involved in ‘green’ energy one way or another. But most of them are also in the natural gas distribution business.
Covid
There was supposed to be a COP last year, but it was cancelled because of Covid. This year it is full speed ahead but the planners seem to be completely clueless about the Delta Variant.
Covid rules for traveling to the UK will be relaxed for thousands of delegates attending the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November.
Up to 25,000 government representatives, media and campaigners from around the world are expected. They will not be required to be fully vaccinated but officials said it would be strongly encouraged.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
Back in April, Greta Thunberg said that she would not attend, due to the unfair distribution of Covid vaccines around the world. At the time, she had not even received her own shot, in well-to-do Sweden. She has very recently been vaccinated and now says she would attend. Greta has given some very forceful speeches at UN assemblies, but all she can really do is hope to embarrass the other attendees for their inaction. Unlike many members of the press, you can’t distract Greta with political flummery — she literally has a photographic memory and she reads all the reports.
The people at COP26 who need to do something can not be embarrassed, or they would not be politicians or corporate leaders in the first place. But Thunberg understands the optics of such situations.
Do not be surprised if this COP is cancelled as well as Delta spreads. Huge in-person conferences are so Last Century, which is where all the politicians seem to be stuck.
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