"You might as well bomb us" Day two at COP
Yesterday was a perplexing parade of pledges, interspersed with dire warnings. The latter came from, amongst others, the leaders of Gabon, Rwanda and Palau, the last of whom offered the above quote. It was, overall, hard to zoom out and work out where we stand after day two and the end of the international leaders summit. For anyone who has followed international climate action in recent years it was hard not to feel excited at the number of pledges and the level of engagement, particularly as leaders of the developed world such as Ireland, Finland and the UK spoke once again of the need to take responsibility. It was like a procession of your estranged family members returning all at once with a singular desire to make things up. It gave an immediate feeling of warmth, but then no one looked you in the eye as they shook your hand. You kept an eye on them all day in case they tried to escape out the conservatory door. Is this fair? Only time, and experts, will tell.
Headline commitments yesterday were as follows. First, the US re-joined the High Ambition Coalition. I’m not quite sure how this is going to work given Biden’s recent struggles to pass anything like a sufficient clean energy bill in congress, but the coalition represents a commitment to do everything possible to keep warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The language of the Paris agreement made it easy to settle for 2°C, so this is an important movement, with every fraction of a degree mattering greatly. Its leaders, such as founder Tina Stege of the Marshall Islands, will push for an end to fossil fuel subsidies (currently at a whopping $11 million a minute according to the IMF) and the doubling of financing for the developing world.
Secondly, Ecuador led Panama, Colombia and Costa Rice in establishing the Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor (CMAR) to create a massive fishing free zone in one of the world’s most important tracts of ocean, including the world-famous Galapagos Islands. Third came a slew of financial pledges. Pension funds, a crucial store of global finance, from the UK and Nordic countries announced they would invest $130bn in climate projects by 2030 and, crucially, report annually on their progress.
As an aside, pensions are possibly the most powerful tool we have as individuals in shaping the world we want to live in. Any idea what all that money you’re putting aside is doing? Neither do I, but you can be sure it’s not just sitting there. Director Richard Curtis runs a campaign encouraging people to take ownership of this pot, much of which currently funds fossil fuel assets, arms trading and various unsustainable practices.
Anyway, Norway committed to double its climate finance by 2026 - easy for a country which runs on the money from fossil fuel exports (no really, google it). African countries agree to spending at least $6bn a year from their tax revenues on climate adaptation (mitigation means trying to prevent climate change, adaptation means, well, adapting to it. We increasingly need a mixture of the two) and called on developed nations to provide $2.5bn a year to help. The EU pledged $1bn to protect the world’s forests.
Fourth, president Biden led a 90 party pledge to slash emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane by 2030. This seemed to me like a major step, as methane is notoriously difficult to control. After a quick google I was swiftly corrected by Oxford Professors Allen and Pierrehumbert who both said that, although methane is potent, this was a minor distraction from the main task of ending the burning of fossil fuels (which would incidentally cut methane emissions as well). This isn’t dissimilar to the message of indigenous activists on Monday, which will be quite amusing for anyone who has come across Myles Allen. It is becoming a bit of a theme: just keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Finally, major powers together launched the ‘Breakthrough Agenda’, targeting innovation in green technologies in order to bring forward the crucial point, as we have reached with solar, where they become cheaper than their fossil fuel driven counterpart. The technologies in particular focus are electricity, vehicles, green steel, hydrogen and sustainable farming, with the potential of together creating 20 million jobs. This feels suspiciously Johnsonian, his lips I’m sure twitching with the words ‘levelling up’, but whatever your political outlook it is actually incredibly important.
This pledge would have gone down well in the green zone (open to the public, in contrast to the blue zone of officials) in which I spent the afternoon. The green zone is a strange world that is very aptly placed in the Glasgow science museum; a small town of stallholders vies for space with exhibitions on hydrolysis and the atom, all of which seem more easily decipherable than the stands. This is very much a space for the techno-optimist.
The biggest room was full of major companies with impossible glitzy setups promising the world – or the opposite. I wished I knew enough about each to ask the difficult questions. A friend in fact asked Sky, the sponsors of COP26, some very simple ones. Rather than concrete actions, it seems they are offering their partners a packet of seeds and a magnet reminding them to talk to their families about the climate. I’m sure there is more, but the bloke on the stall at the most important climate change event of the decade couldn’t tell you about it.
Having just emerged from an emotional panel showing footage of the global impacts of climate change, a large advertising board at the exit presented me immediately with the solution: lentil lasagne. I believe this piece of Sainsburys marketing is currently resplendent in major cities across the UK. It manages to be concurrently one of the most uninspiring and misleading campaigns I have ever come across. Misleading because my decision to swap beef for lentils is irrelevant if Sainsburys doesn’t decarbonise its global operations and work with its suppliers. Uninspiring because, well, lentil lasagne. It is these sorts of logical leaps so characteristics of big corporations and individualist cultures that frustrate so many of us. Of course we all need to do our bit, as long as this doesn’t distract from the primary role of governments, corporations and financial institutions. Having said all that, a village of chipboard harboured some amazing initiatives, from movements on air quality, to a feminist climate coalition, to a new venture swapping delivery vans for futuristic underground tubes driven by magnets.
It would be great to see who got to design the panels and control the mix of exhibitors, because it was eminently political. Many were a bit too focused on individual companies and toed a line unsubtly with an outright marketing show. Despite this, however, it is actually heartening to see many of the solution providers. While some of us might denigrate innovation on moral grounds – ‘we need to change the underlying bad behaviours which have caused this crisis rather than simply try to innovate our way out of it’ – such progress will in reality be essential.
This is a fact not lost on the world’s second richest man, on whose day I would like to end. The actions of Jeff Bezos, and in fact our friend Boris Johnson perfectly summarise the day’s play. Both spoke very well on the situation. Both acknowledged that far more needed to be done. Both pledged substantial amounts of money. Bezos, in the middle of a powerful speech, then spoke of how valuable his trip to space had been in appreciating the finite nature of our plant. Sorry? I’m glad you thought it was worth it. Boris then got on his private jet and flew home.
More to come.
All photos are my own.