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Key Takeaways
- COP 30 will take place in Belém, Brazil, as nations prepare to address climate change.
- Past COPs reveal a mixed history, with COP15 struggling and COP21 achieving the historic Paris Accord.
- Challenges include misinformation, global supply chain issues, and increasing fossil fuel influence at COPs.
- Despite the flaws in the COP process, abandoning it could worsen the situation; reforms are essential for meaningful action.
- Hope remains important, but we need less talk and more substantive negotiations at COP 30.
COP 30 is coming. Brazil is this year’s host of the 30th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in Belém.
I attended two COPs, 15 and 21.
COP15, in the dark December Copenhagen, reflected the winter chill, with no viable alternative to the expiring Kyoto Protocol. It was an enlightening look at international diplomacy, spin, and deflection.
Six years later, I freelanced coverage for COP21 in Paris. The failure I witnessed at COP15 in Denmark was countered by COP21, which was as successful as could have been hoped for, given the fragile and flawed process of climate change negotiations. Nearly all countries on the planet agreed, in principle, to address climate change by adopting the Paris Accord. Even if only aspirational, it was historic.
Reaching such an agreement over the finish line required acknowledging its initial inadequacies. However, it at least sets the aspirational goal post for stabilizing climate change: “well below 2 degrees Celsius” from the pre-industrial average, preferably limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius (oops and, very likely, oops).
Negotiating Climate Action: The Devil in the Details
The mechanism for emissions reduction was (is) the INDC, or “Intended Nationally Determined Contribution.” (Note the word “intended.”) Good intentions don’t reduce anthropogenic emissions without action. From the outset, the stated intentions were insufficient, and everyone knew it. The phrase “ratcheting up ambitions” with a “stocktake” in five years was the contingent phrase of the day.
A lot happened in those five years, and the “ratcheting” took a back seat to surviving a global pandemic. By the time the world reconvened for another COP, everything had changed.
The tenuous nature of a global supply chain as economies struggled to recover, a polarized population lurching toward authoritarianism, and a siloed, increasingly AI-driven information landscape distorted by misinformation and invective challenge an effective response.
Jumping the Shark (but still better than nothing)
If, at one time, I put my faith in the UN process, as I did at the conclusion of COP21 in 2015, that faith is now severely strained.
It seems to me that progress is halting, and talk is cheap. We hold onto the belief that we can put a Band-Aid on an ultimately destructive and clearly unsustainable global energy economy, and everything will be all right. We are sold that message by the increasing presence of fossil fuel interests at the COPs, armed with their unmatched propaganda machine, even as they buy governments to do their bidding.
And then, of course, there’s the rumbling, bumbling elephant in the room. Or more accurately stated, the elephant that is nowhere to be found. Donald Trump’s deranged rhetoric and willingness to throw a thriving industry and US leadership under the bus are lamentable, and couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
Does all this sound grim? Perhaps. But as I always say, hope is when we stop fooling ourselves.
Indeed, even though the COP process is flawed and arguably useless in its current form, we should not abandon a global forum of sovereign nations. We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that, without significant reform, the process will remain mostly aspirational and increasingly serve interests that counter its intentions.
Less circus, more substance, is all I’m saying.
Let’s see what happens in Belém. No doubt, negotiations will linger late into the night of the final day and into the next morning, as they always do. Hopefully, something positive will emerge. We could all use a little good news.
