(100) COP28 sucks. Pay attention anyway. - by Emily Atkin (heated.world)
Emily Adkin writes, “I can understand why one might want to tune out COP28, the United Nations climate change summit set to begin tomorrow in the United Arab Emirates.”
I can too, but my reasons are different. They have little to do with “a literal fossil fuel baron: Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the head of the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), which also happens to have one of the biggest oil and gas expansion plans in the world” chairing COP 28.
Nor are they “Because while choosing to ignore COP28 may feel morally righteous in the moment, it’s effectively a middle finger to the Global South, which is depending on successful outcomes at this summit to achieve crucial funding from the Global North for adaptation, mitigation and reparation.”
Don’t get me wrong. Funding for adaption, (that would in effect BE reparation for the damage from past CO2 emissions) is necessary and commitments by rich countries to do so would be highly desirable.
But more important is to refocus COP commitments away from achieving arbitrary quantitative goals of CO2 reductions, arbitrarily distributed among countries, and toward policies that will, in the aggregate, result in zero net CO2 emissions.
“The somber reality of the world’s rapidly diminishing carbon budget means every opportunity to make climate progress must be taken seriously, whether the people in power are doing so or not.” And this means that polices to reduce net CO2 emissions need to be as least cost as possible. So far, this aspect has gotten little attention from those most interested in reducing the harm from future climate change.
Of course, even least cost policies for achieving this mitigation will have some costs to growth (deadweight losses), so assistance to poor countries to offset these minimal losses is also highly desirable. Commitments to do so would be a desirable outcome of COP 28. In this context, however, it is necessary to understand that policies that effectively reduce demand for fossil fuels will have disparate impacts on different countries. A country that mainly imports fossil fuels and has little possibility of substitution away from them in energy generation, will see a terms of trade effect benefit of more from the decline in the prices of fossil fuels than its dead weight losses from taxing fossil fuel imports. A major exporter of fossil fuels like Abu Dhabi, however, will see major declines in export revenue in addition to any deadweight loss from adjusting its energy production and consumption baskets. For a minor exporter (relative to its economy) like the US, the negative terms of trade effect would be small.
It is also important not to get sidetracked into dividing the world up between heroes and villains as represented by Bill McKibben:
“The only hope for this COP—and really for this planet—is that our revulsion at revelations like these [“Al Jaber has been using his position as head of COP28 to lobby foreign governments <gasp> to buy Adnoc oil and gas”] somehow spurs the movements necessary to break the power of Big Oil.”
When we get climate change activists actively working for taxation of net CO2 emissions and regulatory reform to permit faster deployment of a) zero CO2-emitting solar, nuclear, wind, and geothermal energy generation, b) transmission, and storage of zero CO2 energy, and c) carbon capture and sequestration, THEN we can worry about “breaking the power” of fossil fuel companies to prevent adoption of these measures.
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[Standard bleg: Although my style is know-it-all-ism, I do sometime entertain the thought that, here and there, I might be mistaken on some minor detail. I would welcome what the diplomats call “a frank exchange of views.”😊]