COP28 — sound and fury, signifying nothing

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/12/2023 (1009 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

COP28. The farce continues. A climate change summit hosted by the United Arab Emirates, a collection of tin-pot absolute monarchies, dependent on oil revenue to sustain their authoritarian regimes, and chaired by an oil sheik who does not believe that science supports the phasing out of fossil fuels. Wow!

U.S. President Joe Biden may have sent the most powerful message to the assembled delegates should they be listening to anyone other than themselves. He stayed away.

Canada, on the other hand, has jumped in with both feet. Although a minor player — Canada emits well under two per cent of global greenhouse gases — we have one of the largest delegations. Considering that by the only measure of success — arresting the global temperature rise — the 27 previous conferences have produced next to nothing, it may be time to wrap up the “see the world at taxpayer expense” travel agency for federal sycophants.

Let those of us not in the bloated Canadian contingent in the heady whorl of Dubai, step back and take a glance at reality.

Atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise annually and currently stand at 418.6 ppm. To put this in context, 350 ppm is thought to be the point at which global temperature increase can be “managed.”

We punched through this mark in the late eighties. 400 ppm was the next benchmark at which global warming would exceed one degree Celsius but remain manageable.

That went by the boards less than a decade ago. The target now is 450 ppm which would keep global temperature increase below two degrees. Even if all the mitigation measures promised are implemented, and the will to do so is flagging everywhere, this current target will be exceeded well before 2050, the year of magic carbon neutrality.

Current oil consumption stands at just over 97 million barrels per day, slightly less than the 100 million pre-COVID consumption record, with the slack being taken up by natural gas.

The estimated cost of achieving a carbon neutral world by 2050 is estimated at between US$110 trillion and US$275 trillion, more than twice world annual GDP. This would be as much as US$7 trillion every year between now and 2050.

Scientists are now seeing a three-degree world temperature increase, with accompanying dire environmental disruption, as virtually inevitable.

COP28 proposals to stem this tidal wave?

Curb methane emissions. We’ve been talking about this for how long? And whatever gains are made from proposed measures like forcing increased methane capture from oil and gas production (Canada) will be more than offset by climate change powered permafrost melting in the North.

Fund measures to assist less developed countries to adapt to climate change and compensate for damages. Canada is assuaging our guilt with a whopping $16-million contribution. Huge assist to small island nations likely to be underwater by the end of the century.

And of course there will be the annual genuflect to great plans usually honoured more in the breach than the execution.

The great flaw in the COP process is that it operates as though it was a world government (and it must be to succeed) but it most certainly is not. The big players, the U.S. and China, have no intention of surrendering sovereignty to the UN, COP28 or anyone else. Biden’s no-show reveals U.S. commitment as largely political rhetoric and China continues to increase its emissions.

All this sounds like just another guy walking around wearing a sandwich board reading “the world will end in 2050.” But facing facts is a good first step in avoiding or at least mitigating, not an apocalypse — humanity will survive — but catastrophic disruption and suffering.

We worship the capitalist market that has wrought enormous benefits but seemingly can’t account for its cataclysmic impact on the natural environment. Many believe it will be the “marketplace” that will ultimately slam the brakes on climate change.

I believe this too. But it is the marketplace of ideas that will ultimately arrest climate change and create the adjustments to its devastating effects.

The “great reset” envisaged by the World Economic Forum is really nothing more than idiot billionaires belatedly waking up to the fact that in a world ravaged by climate change, our social systems may not hold up very well, and money may no longer provide insulation against the real world. What the Davos Men (and they are mostly men) propose is a modified same old, same old; a tweaked, growth-based economics, the bedrock and bane of our current system.

The term “sustainable development,” a neoliberal stand-in for “sustainable growth,” was popularized 30 years ago by the Brundtland Commission. Over that 30 years we have learned that SD stands for “sustained destruction.”

In time, when reality has finally punctured the COP hot air balloon — and that time is not far away — we will at least have 70,000 disillusioned COP28 delegates searching for a better way.

They will be joined by millions of other mostly young people, sincerely dedicated to facing down climate change. Social change will ultimately blunt climate change.

The first priority will be to invent “survival economics” not dependent on growth, where stasis and prosperity can coexist. It may mean no more billionaires, just good old-fashioned millionaires.

My sandwich board reads: Our grandkids are smarter than we are.

They will figure it out.

Norman Brandson is the former deputy minister of the Manitoba departments of environment, conservation and water stewardship.