COP26 - A Predictable Failure
From the corporate capture of the UN to the hijacking of the sound scientific concept of net zero, COP26 failed on so many levels.
‘FLOP26’ would more accurately describe the event that took place in Glasgow from 31 October - 12 November 2021. A year’s delay due to the COVID pandemic didn’t really change the dynamic of the climate summit, billed as the ‘last chance’ to save the planet. At the end of it all we were offered the Glasgow Climate Pact, a glossy document more reminiscent of a travel brochure or something a car sales person would dish out. The Pact is introduced by COP26 President Alok Sharma, with some familiar vacuous drivel, saying that:
We can now say with credibility that we have kept 1.5 degrees alive. But, its pulse is weak and it will only survive if we keep our promises and translate
commitments into rapid action.
Apparently this Pact ‘finally completes the Paris Rulebook.’ But there isn’t a ‘rulebook’. The Paris Agreement is non-binding, just like the pact. Signing up to an agreement doesn’t mean it will be honoured.
Trudging through the hyperbole, what does this document actually indicate? To start, it focuses on four key areas:
• Mitigation - reducing emissions
• Adaptation - helping those already impacted by climate change
• Finance - enabling countries to deliver on their climate goals
• Collaboration - working together to deliver even greater action
These are nothing new. They have formed the basis for climate action since the beginning. But with some dangerous and misleading crystal ball thinking, comments like this outlines the Pack’s lack of credibility (emphasis added):
If the pledges made at Glasgow are fully implemented, warming will be kept below 2C; and with the commitment to further action over the next decade we have kept 1.5C in reach.
This inane statement clearly reflects the inability of the Government to comprehend the gravity of the impending crisis. In addition it makes a big issue out of the claim that, ‘Over 90% of world GDP and around 90% of global emissions are now covered by net zero commitments.’ This is predicated on a total of 153 countries revising their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). As we’ll discover later, net zero is a con - the political version that is.
The big thing here is coal, with more of those ‘commitments’ to reduce coal use, along with rather vague outlines that lack any real context. Along with that there are various pledges and commitments to reduce deforestation. Then there’s the electric vehicle revolution - the same one that elevated Elon Musk to the unenviable position of richest person on Earth. Here, the only reference to oil - a fossil fuel - is mentioned in the document:
Road transport accounts for over 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and around half the world’s consumption of oil.
The focus here is on the car market. No mention of public transport. Methane emissions reductions were another issue cited. But nothing about methane in the context of natural gas use.
There are lots of buzz words here (emphasis added): ‘Even as we work tirelessly to reduce emissions, further change is inevitable’; ‘We know that the most vulnerable are at the greatest risk from climate change, and that they have done the least to cause it’. Apparently a ‘Champions Group’ has been set up to provide adaptation finance. Then there is a plethora of acronym rich initiatives that are punctuated throughout the document.
There is little point in analysing the Pact in great detail as it doesn’t really offer anything of substance. There is an official UNFCCC version of the Pact that avoids a lot of the fluffy rhetoric present in UK Government version noted here. But ultimately both can be stamped ‘Failure’.
The Transnational Institute (TNI) hit it on the nail:
A crucial climate summit is becoming the biggest finance greenwash in history.
Its report (published on 2 November 2021), COP26: Financiers of polluters in charge, ‘unpacks the spin of Net.Zero and explains how big corporations have hijacked the decision.’
The report focuses on the corporate capture of the UN system and the UNFCCC, with the financial sector in particular. This is an area that was covered in some depth in a previous article and it’s worth pointing out here just how strong an influence the UK has within the global financial system.
The UK has a global network of tax jurisdictions or tax havens, e.g. places such as the Cayman Islands or Jersey. Powerful corporate interests and criminal enterprises hide their assets offshore. All this orbits around the City of London Corporation, fronted by ‘not for profit’ lobbying organisation TheCityUK. Anything can pass through the City. It has become a covert centre for money laundering. Wall St uses the City to circumvent inconvenient regulations such as the Dodd-Frank Act, which was originally set up to regulate excesses within the US financial sector. Those excesses of course led to the 2008 crash, of which the City was the epicentre. This then is the backdrop that explains how the UK presidency of COP26 became intimately intertwined with the financial sector.
But the UN had already forged links with global finance behemoths. With its roots going back to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the United Nations
Environmental Programme (UNEP) set up the UNEP Financial Initiative (UNEP FI). Initially this initiative was well intended, with the intention of tapping into the system as a means to building the foundations towards sustainable development, which was the ultimate goal of the Earth Summit. Invariably though the process became dominated by corporate interests. Unfortunately this is a pattern that has become reflected in the UN as a whole. As the report notes this is due to:
putting transnational corporations at the centre of solutions to the current intersecting global crises brought about by neoliberal globalisation of the
economy and politics. At the same time, the UN system has been weakened – with many governments failing to deliver on financial obligations. We have also seen the steady erosion of the binding human rights regime, which has tolerated corporate impunity and substituted voluntary corporate social responsibility in the place of accountability.
The UN’s intertwining with the corporate sector was consolidated in 2000 by the UN Global Compact, ‘which gave privileged UN access to Corporations.’
The build up to COP26 began in late 2019. It then became clear what agenda the Summit would follow, with the appointment of Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada - not to mention a spell at Goldman Sachs - as ‘“Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance” and “Finance Adviser on COP26.”’ According to Boris Johnston, Carney would “help the UK to lead in mobilising businesses and investors to support our net zero revolution.” Suffice to say the build up to COP26 has been carefully engineered by Carney at the helm and the networks that have emerged prior to COP. As the report notes:
…the official UNFCCC is about to abdicate its responsibility to govern the private financial side of the climate challenge. They are but one element of
a bigger design intended to leave the initiative to financial corporations - and not just those that have signed commitments. This is clear from the main proposal on private finance for COP26, tabled by Mark Carney.
Net Zero = Nothing At All
At this juncture we’ll dig into the fallacy of ‘Net Zero’. Net zero has become one of those buzzwords that ends up becoming repeated so often and is overused to the point that its literal meaning becomes obscured and meaningless. Net zero can mean different things to different people. But what it does mean is not what it’s supposed to mean when uttered by corporate interests and their political lackeys.
A briefing from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) clearly explains the fallacy of net zero and the inherent distortions and shortsightedness of the concept as used by the corporate and political establishment. It outlines the false solutions and remedies that underpin the fallacy.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a favourite. But requires additional energy input to function, burning additional fossil fuels and invariably creating more emissions through the process of capturing, transporting, and storing carbon dioxide. It’s also uneconomic. To expand at scale would require huge subsidies.
The bizarre notion of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere is also touted as a solution. There are two methods involved: Direct air capture
(DAC), ‘which uses large machines to pull ambient carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere’ and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), which is the burning of biomass as a substitute for fossil fuels. Running these at scale, especially BECCS, require huge swaths of land that could impact food production and biodiversity resulting in the decline of ecosystems and related services.
Carbon offsets has become a popular solution. Its one of those clever accounting tricks so beloved by economists, where according to their particular logic, it is possible to defy the laws of physics by creating something out of thin air. The idea that emissions can be offset across the board continuously from some other source indefinitely is not only impractical but also impossible as there simply would not be the resources available to cover the full range of offsets. The briefing notes:
The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero has developed principles for groups including banks, insurers, asset managers, and asset owners to deal with these and other issues.
The TNI report goes into this in detail. The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) is the umbrella organisation coordinating the different strands of financial interests involved. It was setup by Carney and based at the UK Treasury. According to Carney its aim is to “act as the strategic forum to ensure the financial system works together to broaden, deepen, and accelerate the transition to a net zero economy.”
But the players involved have a dirty and dubious track record. They include: Citibank, ‘ No.2 on banking on fossil fuel expansion worldwide’; BlackRock, ‘the second biggest investor in coal’; Bank of America, ‘No. 3 on banking on fossil fuel expansion worldwide,’ and HSBC, which, ‘has expanded its banking on fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement, including financing of offshore oil and gas in which it ranks No. 5.’
The responsibility for financing climate solutions has been left in the hands of institutions who’s remit is to make money. To say this is a conflict of interest would be an understatement. The key problem here is the UN taking a back seat and handing responsibility for virtually everything to the corporate sector. As the report concludes:
The other crucial lesson from this turn of events is the need to free the UN system from the recent dangerous experiments with delegation of power to coalitions of corporations. In the absence of strong resistance, what will unfold at COP26 and in the coming years, is that democracy will be dropped in favour of corporate capture. That must not be allowed to happen – not when it comes to climate change, or any other matter.
A CIEL article in the aftermath of COP26 echos these concerns. The dominance of the corporate sector in negotiations was underlined by the exclusion of civil society during the first few days of the COP. This was denounced by UN Special Rapporteurs, who ‘issued urgent appeals to the UN Climate Secretariat (Caution: Google drive) and the UK presidency (Caution: Google drive) to ensure that all voices could be heard.’ Such was the overwhelming presence of corporate interests that:
The greenwashing threat was so pronounced in both the lead up to COP and during the gathering that the UN Secretary General announced the establishment of a Group of Experts to act as a watchdog, identifying corporations whose climate claims are not matched by adequate actions.
Part of this was an obsessive focus on coal - as if that was the only fossil fuel in existence. Oil and gas was largely bypassed for obvious reasons, the most powerful nations economies rely on oil and gas. Then there is a rather concerning loophole regarding offset credits that allows ‘the use of junk credits from Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects dating back to 2013 to meet emissions reduction targets going forward.’ The problem here being:
In generating credits, the CDM also generated land grabs and violations of the rights of Indigenous Peoples and people living in project areas; the little reductions in emissions it created were often without any tangible long-term benefits. Using these zombie credits to achieve “net zero” or post-2020 emission reduction targets does nothing to address the current climate crisis and reduce emissions now.
The net result of all this is zero commitment to put money where the problems are. As CIEL points out:
The scale and pace of the worsening climate crisis demonstrates that this is not a future problem, but a now problem, as the damages only continue to mount. …The ongoing failure of political leaders to provide quantitatively and qualitatively adequate finance for mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage – finance that is people-centred, gender-responsive, and accessible to climate-vulnerable communities – is morally reprehensible.
There were however a few silver linings to emerge from COP26, if not within the negotiations themselves. The Danish and Costa Rican governments (acting as co-chairs) launched the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance (BOGA). In addition, France, Greenland, Ireland, Sweden, and Wales became founding members along with the Canadian province of Quebec. Linking in as associate members are; New Zealand, Portugal, and the U.S. state of California. They have produced the BOGA declaration (caution: Google Drive):
The BOGA Declaration is a shared commitment between national governments, subnational governments, and other actors to work to limit oil and gas production and extraction and plan for a just, equitable, and managed phase out of existing oil and gas production. By signing, actors indicate their support for BOGA’s goals and theories of change. All actors who wish to become a member of BOGA at any level must sign, with additional steps required for those who wish to become Core or Associate members.
At the same time, in an apparently linked action, Carbon Tracker launched the Global Registry of Fossil Fuels, to ‘foster transparency on fossil fuel production and make governments more accountable.’
Another positive move was the decision by the Scottish Government to partner with the Climate Justice Resilience Fund, pledging £1 million ($1.4m) ‘to support the victims of climate disaster, in a world first that representatives of vulnerable countries hope will inspire others to follow.’ This was an issue that was agreed under the Paris Agreement. Although it’s a small amount, it represents an important start.
Net zero started out as a sound scientific concept. But its adoption by the politico-corporate-economic complex has distorted its meaning. This raises the question as how net zero commitments can be successfully accomplished? This is considered in a paper published in Nature Climate Change, The meaning of net zero and how to get it right.
The paper points out that, ‘Net zero is just a number’:
CO2 -induced warming halts when net anthropogenic CO2 emissions halt (that is, CO2 emissions reach net zero), with the level of warming determined by cumulative net emissions to that point.
But in order to have an impact on global warming, emissions have to go below zero. That means CO2 has be sequestered from the atmosphere. Of course CO2 isn’t the only greenhouse gas and this creates another variable. To be relevant, CO2-equivalent emissions should be part of the equation. Also, this is long term. It could take decades or even centuries to balance everything out. The obvious problem here is that any action is self-regulating and voluntary:
The Paris Agreement leaves it to its parties to define their own emissions pathways or nationally determined contributions to global net zero. There is no official yardstick against which the adequacy, ambition or fairness of nationally determined contributions is measured.
Indeed it seems to come across like a PR driven competition, with everyone jumping on the ‘Race to Zero’ bandwagon, hence the accusations of ‘greenwashing’ as many of the commitments made lack robust focus and merely reflect an entities ‘ambition’. Net zero if done properly can lead to a reduction in emissions. To this end the paper proposes seven attributes that would entail ‘a credible net zero’. The following infographic outlines them:
A brief outline of the three categories follows, firstly with urgent action required to establish a robust framework for climate action. The paper states:
every year of delay before initiating emission reductions decreases the remaining time available to reach net-zero emissions.
It adds that, ‘Earlier action helps (or would have helped) to overcome the inertia in economic systems’ (emphasis added). Front-loading involves setting up a framework immediately with interim targets and long-term commitments.
What differentiates net zero from previous initiatives is its comprehensive coverage of all emissions. We’re not talking about percentages, as was established under the Kyoto Protocol or Climate Change Acts. In theory it should be easier to reach targets due to the fact that:
important tipping points have been reached. The fall in renewable energy costs has been so steep that the transition to zero-carbon electricity now seems hard to stop.
There are though more difficult sectors that won’t be so easily decarbonised e.g. heavy industries, buildings, food and agriculture, aviation, and mining. It is therefore important that the integrity of net zero is maintained. This means careful consideration as to how CO2 can be safely removed from the atmosphere and stored, not to mention:
concerns about moral hazard risks arising from an over-reliance on carbon removal strategies, which may enable business as usual rather than the drastic scaling back of fossil-fuel use.
Then there is the question of offsets. These need to be strictly regulated. But these have been problematic as there is nothing in place to monitor offset mechanisms. They may offer short term solutions but are no substitute for proper cutbacks of emissions. And the paper outlines abuses of the system:
Badly conceived schemes have been accused of issuing credits for the preservation of forests that were not under threat or, in the case of commercial plantations, only offer short-term high-risk carbon storage with negative outcomes for biodiversity and local communities.
Sustainable development has underpinned climate action since day 1. Fairness is also vital. As such, there must be a just transition towards net zero, as called for in the Paris Agreement:
The Paris Agreement is explicit about the need for an equitable transition. It urges global peaking of emissions, but emphasizes that “peaking will take longer for developing countries” and that net zero is to be achieved “on the basis of equity” and in the context of “sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty” (Article 4(1)).
The paper outlines the vital point that climate change is part of a wider pattern of ecological degradation, having the effect of being a ‘threat multiplier’ that amplifies other ecological stress points. There’s a growing consensus that nature based solutions are the most effective way to tackle the problem. But they must follow a clear pattern of ecological resilience and adaptation. This would be at its most effective if ecosystems were protected and remained intact with their ecosystem services preserved. The input of indigenous cultures are important here. In short, ‘nature-based solutions must be biodiversity-based and people-led’.
The paper suggests that net zero can offer economic opportunities. But these must incur long term vision with a shift away from ‘harmful market and policy failures, such as the prevalence of fossil-fuel subsidies’. All this will require a systemic change within the current economic status quo. There has been shifts in the past but nothing on the scale required to avert what is an imminent existential extinction event. As the paper sums up:
Net-zero commitments are not an alternative to urgent and comprehensive emissions cuts. Indeed, net zero demands greater focus on eliminating difficult emissions sources than has so far been the case. The ‘net’ in net zero is essential, but the need for social and environmental integrity imposes firm constraints on the scope, timing and governance of both carbon dioxide removal and carbon offsets.
And:
If interpreted right and governed well, net zero can be an effective frame of reference for climate action.
In other words, the theory is sound, it’s the application that really matters. And as far as the UK Government is concerned its application of net zero was tested in court. ClientEarth took out a legal challenge against the Government on 12 January 2022 on the basis that, ‘the Government is not taking action at the pace needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change’ and that ‘these failings mean the UK Government has breached its legal duties under the 2008 Climate Change Act.’ Friends of the Earth also took legal action over the Governments net zero strategy. In January 2022, both parties merged their cases, collaborated with the Good Law Project and won. To sum up the ruling:
The High Court found that the net zero strategy, which sets out plans to decarbonise the economy, doesn’t meet the Government’s obligations under the Climate Change Act to produce detailed climate policies, that show how the UK’s legally-binding carbon budgets will actually be met.
It also found that parliament and the public were not told about a shortfall in meeting a key target to cut emissions. Behind-the-scenes calculations by civil servants to determine the impact of emissions cuts from policies in the government’s net zero strategy did not add up to the reductions necessary to meet the sixth carbon budget, which is the volume of greenhouse gases the UK can emit during the period 2033-37.
The ruling states that Greg Hands, the Minister for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, who was responsible for signing off the strategy, didn’t have the legally required information on how carbon budgets would be met when he did so.
The Peoples’ Summit?
As is typical of COPs, there is the inevitable alternative run by civil society along with mass demonstrations. But as noted above, at COP26 civil society was sidelined and excluded. The most effective critique of the whole affair came from satirical Australian campaign group Juice media, who produce amusing videos that ‘make honest Government ads’:
Corporate media critics Media Lens, made some pertinent observations about ‘A Crime Against Humanity’: The ‘Greenwash Festival’ Of COP26. They quoted a Twitter thread from Stephen Barlow:
The conclusion gets straight to the point:
‘The problem is, unlike the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, where it took nearly 30 years to find out everything we were promised was a scam and it just kept on getting worse – in 30 years time (in fact far less) we are going to be in serious trouble.
‘This is as evil as it gets. This is an orchestrated PR scam to carry on with business as usual. Where various elements like politicians, the mainstream media, billionaires, royalty and vested interests, combine to maintain business as usual, with fraudulent presentation.’
The real issue here is the corporate media shield that presents an alternative reality to cover-up elitist corruption. This is the shield that ‘a shambling, elitist, racist, serial twister of the truth’ and his cohorts hide behind. The BBC is one of the biggest culprits. The international arm of the BBC depends on advertising revenue. Media Lens reports that in 2021, ‘the BBC took £300,000 in advertising revenue from Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Aramco.’ And that’s just Saudi Arabia. In this respect the BBC is no different from any other commercial media outlet. Glen Greenwald tweeted this pertinent point:
The public are probably none the wiser as to the true extent of the crisis. One thing that really came home at COP26 was the police net that was thrown over civil society. The UK Government was determined to show who was in charge and that power=power. As a result, civil society was rendered impotent. Seasoned campaigners may detect an element of Déjà vu here. The explanation here is that whenever civil society takes a step forward, the system adapts and pushes two steps backwards. That’s what happened at COP26. Netpol, The Network for Police Monitoring, produced a comprehensive report, Respect or Repression? An independent report on Operation Urram (Respect), the policing of the COP26 Climate Conference in Scotland, that should be scrutinised closely by campaign groups. The overall conclusion of the report is:
The absence of a high volume of arrests or widespread violence does not constitute a successful ‘human rights based’ policing operation, where, in the absence of exceptional circumstances, that operation also hinders or discourages people from exercising their human rights to freedom of assembly and association, and expression, including the right to “freely receive and impart information”.
We conclude therefore, that Police Scotland not only failed to protect human rights during their policing of COP26, but in many cases actively, against UN and the Venice Commission Guidelines, hindered and in some cases, violated human rights.
What is needed then is a highly focused grassroots orientated campaign, a campaign for net zero that follows the science and has a firm legal basis. That will be the subject of the next article. I’ll be analysing one of the most successful campaigns ever mounted and looking at what makes a successful campaign.
Excellent summary of the broken system...