by N. Peter Kramer
The 26th UN climate summit starts on Sunday in Glasgow. Despite earlier cheers about the Kyoto Protocol and the tears of joy over the Paris Agreement, the results over three decades are disconcerting: the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is still steadily rising. The run up to Glasgow again reads like a chronicle of an inevitable flop.
Most climate conferences cost more CO2 than they save. Glasgow will be no exception, with approximately 25.000 visitors: politicians, diplomats, civil servants, journalists, businesspeople and, not to forget, environmentalists. Failed green resolutions are symbolic of 30 years of traveling by this climate circus, the increase in greenhouse gases has never stopped.
What is Glasgow all about? The main goal is fixed. In Paris (2015), it was agreed that countries will commit themselves to limiting the temperature increase to 2 degrees, preferable to 1,5 degrees, compared with 1850. In 2015 it was further determined that rich countries first drastically reduce their emissions, because historically they have contributed much more to climate change. After that poor countries, including China, cross the bridge. But regardless of this difference between rich ad poor, every country has homework and Glasgow sets the deadline. Each state must present a plan how it is heading for a green future on the table. The UN concludes that all 165 climate plans already submitted represent an improvement but do not come close to 1,5 degrees.
It all depends on the big players. The US, after Trump as a wrong-way driver, is willing but Biden’s plan has met opposition from senators, including two Democrats, from states dependent on oil and gas. China finds being climate neutral in 2060 difficult enough, the country is engaged in a power change. Anyhow, for 24 ‘poor countries’ including China, India and Indonesia climate neutrality in 2050 is a bridge too far. ‘Unfair’, the group said recently, ‘let rich countries go to net-zero within a decade’. They want to keep a clear path to more fossil fuelled prosperity for as long as possible.
Russia says it is, for instance, eager to tackle methane leaks from gas exploration. ‘But, Gazprom is suffering from western sanctions, that have nothing to do with climate problems’. Putin’s diplomats argue that the EU and the US should abolish it first. The EU has the most ambitious plan ever, but without the US and China, it doesn’t mean a real global change and the EU citizens will have to pay the bill of the questionable Green Plan.
Without pledges from the world’s biggest emitters China and the US, according to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, any other attempt is as futile as ‘spitting in the wind’.
