With so much chaos in the world, from the United States sliding into authoritarianism to the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine, you could be forgiven for not focusing on what happened this week in Baku, Azerbaijan.
World leaders gathered Saturday for the annual UN climate talks. Their task at the summit, known as COP29, is perhaps the most important in the world: to determine how to implement and build on the commitment of each country to reduce the burning of fossil fuels in order to protect humanity from this terrible and growing threat.
This is not the time to dismiss or diminish the significance and importance of these promises and commands.
This year’s discussion is mainly concerned with how to raise up to $1 trillion a year in climate finance to help the developing and vulnerable countries of the world, which causes a little pollution that makes the planet warm but has suffered consequences. The rich countries that bear most of the responsibility for the crisis, because they emit more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, predictably do not pay more.
As the conference nears its scheduled end this week, UN climate chiefs are calling out negotiators for digging in their heels and wasting time with bluffing and brinkmanship. Even if a strong agreement has been hammered out, there is no real guarantee against backtracking. The agreement that emerged from last year’s conference called “transition away” from fossil fuels for the first time, but a year later, the country has no significant progress in doing so.
The background to this conversation is not encouraging either. It’s becoming held in the petrostate for the third year in a row and again flooded with fossil fuel lobbyists. The host country, whose president told conference participants that oil and gas are “God’s gift“plans to increase fossil fuel production over the next decade. Some nations and corporationMeanwhile, already retreat from equal climate commitment.
It doesn’t help that Donald Trump, president-elect of the world’s largest historical carbon emitter, has a long history of making false statements about climate science and renewable energy. He has announced some of his Cabinet picks misrepresented the reality of climate change. He voted for the Energy secretary, oil and gas services executive Chris Wright, to falsely assert that “there is no climate crisis” and “there is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy.”
But just as we can’t outrun the laws of physics underlying global warming, we can’t put off any more time to end the harmful burning of fossil fuels. There is no procedural, political or financial reason that makes no sense if we continue to pump the atmosphere full of greenhouse gases that endanger life on this planet as we know it.
This year is expected to be hottest in recorded historywhile global carbon emissions on track to increase by an additional 0.8%reach another record high. UN Secretary General António Guterres called 2024 a “master class in climate destruction.”
Earth has warmed 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit since preindustrial times and is on track for a total warming of 4.7 to 5.6 degrees. That guarantees more deadly and destructive heat waves, storms, floods and droughts, unless we do more, quickly, to reduce emissions.
Is there any hope? Of course it is. Electric vehicles are spreading rapidly around the world, and renewable sources such as wind and solar accounted for 30% of global energy generation last year – a figure that is expected to grow even faster this year. We are still in the early stages of a generational shift to a new and better energy system, and it seems clear that we will never go back to the dirty, fossil-fuel economy of the month. As Guterres said last week, “The clean energy revolution is here. No group, no business and no government can stop it.
But world leaders must act quickly and decisively to accelerate the transition. Renewable energy must continue to grow dramatically to outpace the rising demand for electricity as the economy moves toward carbon-free vehicles and equipment.
Political setbacks, missed targets and failed ambitions are certainly alarming and demoralizing in the context of these threats. But we have to keep fighting. Every ton of pollution and fraction of the rate of warming we can prevent will reduce human suffering and ecological damage. If we act, we don’t have to resign ourselves to the worst possible future.
