COPping Out at the Beggars Banquet

By Ray Rivers

November 25th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

OPINION

The annual Climate Change Congress of the Parties (COP 29) held this year in Azerbaijan has concluded in uncertainty, discontent and pessimism.  Pessimism is what every single one of those delegates should be feeling about the future of the planet we are leaving for our offspring.  The global community has completely failed to halt the advance of global climate warming and with it the ravages of climate change.

Climate Change Congress of the Parties (COP 29)

It’s the fossil fuels and, like an addict on heroin, we are unable to put down the syringe. And the rush from this drug, fossil fuels, will continue for almost a millennium.   The worlds largest producer of oil, the USA, emits just over 10% of global annual GHG emissions but accounts historically for the majority of all that stuff still up there.  That unfortunate record is due to be broken one day soon by the world’s second largest economy and its most significant polluter.

China is still using coal

China, currently at 30% of global GHG annual emissions, is still building coal burning plants.  In fact it had initiated 95% of all global coal plant construction in 2023.  Ironically, it is also the leader in renewable technologies and electric vehicles.  The country is claiming it’ll be carbon neutral by 2060.  But only a blind optimist would buy that given its GHG emissions increased almost 5% last year, 15% faster than the rest of the world.

There is discontent among the smaller nations, including those island states which will eventually disappear into the ever rising oceans.   Many of these less developed countries (LDC) are relatively small contributors to global emissions, certainly compared to China the US and Europe.  But they are at the table, though it seems more like a trough.  If money is for the taking, they want in – the only reason they used all those carbon credits getting there.

The COP process used to be about reducing emission reductions with a little cash on the side to help those LDCs in need.  But it has morphed into an income redistribution exercise and a money grab.  $100 billion was promised in 2009 and this year the ante was upped to $300 billion.  Still the ask was for two or three trillion big ones.  Delegates from less developed nations are calling it a paltry sum, but nobody is leaving money on the table.  And how does India, with the fifth largest global economy and fourth largest military have the nerve to claim access to that COP money?

COP has lost its way.  The 1990’s Kyoto protocol was the best chance to get global cooperation and action on reductions.

COP has lost its way.  The 1990’s Kyoto protocol was the best chance to get global cooperation and action on reductions.  But then GW Bush, the oil president, pulled the rug out and it was drill baby drill.  Obama helped create the voluntary Paris Agreement in a faint hope to limit the earth’s temperature increase to below 1.5 degrees.   But then the 2016 Donald took his baseball and went home. Though he is coming back and now threatening to take the ball diamond as well.

In any case it is probably too late for incremental emissions reductions, emission targets and all that bureaucratic stuff.  Many have already decided we’re at the 10th stage of grief – acceptance.   The oil companies may have lost the battle to discredit climate scientists since their predictions are ringing in close to home.  But big oil appears to have won the war anyway.  That 1.5 degree tipping point is now within sight – possibly as early as next year.   And so the Paris Agreement will also have failed.

The demographic that is going to have to live with the results of COP29

So the discussion at these annual mega-groupies has turned to something else – welfare for those less developed nations in their struggle to adapt.   COP is not really about emissions reductions for LDCs since if they can afford fossil energy they can easily afford the less costly renewable energy option.  And these less developed nations typically are not the heavy polluters anyway.  Even Canada, which has the tenth largest global economy and is the fourth largest oil producer, still only contributes less than 2% to the problem.

Russia has decided to ignore the world and fall back to it’s nasty environmentally dirty old imperial ways.  The holy land has become one big carbon emitting battlefield.  And China, already the world’s dirtiest polluter will continue to pollute, as we in North America continue to buy their manufactured goods, thus making ourselves complicit. The USA will once again face a neoconservative ideological agenda promising “drill baby drill” and an end to new renewables.  Canada is almost certainly to follow if the opinion polls are right – Ontario already has.

Humble beggar

40% of India’s installed electrical power capacity came from non-fossil fuel sources in 2021.  It already has among the lowest emissions per capita in the world.  And perhaps that alone,  reducing its carbon footprint when wealthier nations are floundering, is a good enough reason to reward India by letting it dine at the beggar’s banquet.  And, no humble beggar, the Indian delegation was one of the loudest voices demanding more money at this COP.

It was symbolic that the last two annual COP meetings were hosted by nations heavily dependant on oil revenues for their GDP.   This year the host was the autocratic and highly repressive former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan which obtains 90% of its foreign income from the black gold.  That country’s president kicked off the COP by setting the tone.  He lectured that oil was a gift from God.

The head of France’s delegation went home after the Azerbaijani president insulted France and Holland over their colonial policies.  The Argentine president brought his entire delegation home after only three days, probably as a symbol to please his new pal the American president-elect.  It was chaos and there were also reports of others leaving in droves like rats abandoning a sinking ship.  And no one should wonder why.

Background links:

Climate Not Improving –   Greenwash Conference –

UNFCCC –    Poilievre and Paris –

Time to Rethink COP –  

Stages of Grief –

Ray Rivers has worked on the climate change challenge since 1992.  In addition to private consulting and heading the international emissions trading company Clean Air Canada, Rivers also assisted the federal and provincial governments in developing emissions trading and reduction programs.   He attended COP 4 in Buenos Aires and COP 9 in Milan.