Good Cop, Bad Cop, or Cop-out at COP28?
The answer is yet to be determined
The 197 states plus the European Union make up the 198 ´parties´ to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) first adopted in 1992. COP28, concluded earlier this week in Dubai, was the first periodic Conference of Parties (COP) to explicitly identify the principal cause of climate change: fossil fuels.
This AfricaFocus includes an analysis of the outcome in the New Republic by Kate Aronoff, one of the leading journalists on climate change, as well as links to several other articles by several other top journalists on the topic.
About my headline
After COP28, headline writers were not shy in exploiting the opportunity for puns. And as an incorrigible punster, I also could not resist. But most such articles focused on weighing up the balance of good and bad in the text adopted. I prefer to highlight the stereotypical description of interrogating a criminal.
In this case the criminals are all those who profit from the production or consumption of fossil fuels. The official parties at COP28 took the ´good cop´ approach, expressing sympathy with the criminals and holding out the promise of multiple loopholes for them to avoid punishment.
It is up to the rest of humanity, particularly those already most negatively affected by global warming, to find effective ways to play ´bad cops,´ not in the sense of physical abuse of criminals but of determination to accept no excuse for delaying the end of fossil fuels.
The strategies needed, ranging from technical fixes to political action to militant protests, and even physical sabotage, are effectively laid out in the science-fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson The Ministry for the Future.
For key additional resources, see https://www.us-africabridgebuilding.org/essays/standing-rock/, https://www.us-africabridgebuilding.org/essays/the-red-deal/, https://www.us-africabridgebuilding.org/essays/naidoo-laduke-1/, https://www.us-africabridgebuilding.org/essays/naidoo-laduke-2/
The U.N. Climate Talks Hung Poorer Nations Out to Dry
December 13, 2023
Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at The New Republic.
Nearly 200 countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, but the U.S. and others are actually expanding oil and gas exploration while refusing to finance the transition for poorer countries.
On Wednesday morning in Dubai, as U.N. climate talks stretched well into overtime, COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber left no room for comments as he rammed through the final version of a text widely understood as the main prize of this year’s negotiations. The Global Stocktake—a framework for meeting the audacious goals of the Paris Agreement—includes two little words that never appeared in that prior document: fossil fuels.
Tina Stege, who represented the Marshall Islands at COP28, delivered an impassioned appeal for more significant action at the close of the conference. But the chair had already announced the approval of the final text.
Ironically, some of the countries that were most adamant about including calls for a “phaseout” of fossil fuels in the Global Stocktake are also those planning to increase their extraction of fossil fuels the most. The United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Norway are responsible for the majority of planned expansion of new oil and gas fields through 2050. All cheered Wednesday’s deal as a key step to “keep 1.5 alive,” referring to the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). But the final text doesn’t reference a phaseout of fossil fuels—only “transitioning away” from them “in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”
“People who don’t know better think this is ambitious,” said Meena Raman, head of programs at the Third World Network, a Malaysia-based nongovernmental organization that closely tracks U.N. climate proceedings. “They come here and talk about ‘keeping 1.5 alive’ while they continue to expand fossil fuel production,” she added, referencing wealthy oil and gas-producing countries in the global north. “It’s a big con on the part of the developed world.”
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As Raman and many others have pointed out, the final text includes several “escape routes” for continued fossil fuel production. Among those is a formal recognition that “transitional fuels,” principally methane gas, “can play a role in facilitating the energy transition while ensuring energy security.” There’s also little clarity on how low- and middle-income countries are meant to finance a transition away from coal, oil, and gas. References to richer countries taking the lead in providing that support were largely watered down in the final version, which emphasizes courting funds from the private sector and multilateral development banks.
“Not only has the finance not been delivered by developed countries, but they’ve been trying to weaken their obligation to provide that finance,” Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA, told me yesterday before the last version of the Global Stocktake had been released. “The U.S. is trying to remove all references to developed countries and to saying they have to be the ones to provide finance.”
Climate justice advocates I spoke with see the U.S. and other global north countries’ ultimately failed push for phaseout language—absent concrete plans or financial support—as, at least in part, a cynical attempt to divide developing countries against one another and advance their own interests.
The G77 plus China has been a powerful negotiation bloc in recent years, having just won a dedicated fund to help countries recover from climate disasters. Establishing that fund meant overcoming years of obstruction from the U.S., in particular. The coalition, though—now 134 countries—is a heterogeneous group that includes the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations and some of its biggest fossil fuel exporters. U.S. media coverage of the fossil fuel phaseout debate at COP28 has largely framed it as a battle between members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries—which opposed that language—and the U.S., which has aligned itself on this issue with low-lying island nations that face an existential threat from continued warming.
“This has been a usual tactic from their playbook to divide and conquer: Ask vulnerable countries to demand more action from developing countries without offering any money,” Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, told me.
Many countries had demanded that language about an energy transition also include committing additional funds to help make it happen. “Any agreement concerning the phasing out of fossil fuels, and any moratorium on new investments in fossil fuel production, must be applied equitably,” the African Group of Negotiators wrote in its contribution to the Global Stocktake.
Like the Paris Agreement itself, the Global Stocktake is a nonbinding agreement. It will be realized mainly through countries updating their own emissions-reduction pledges. There’s very little to keep countries who’ve pushed language about a fossil fuel phaseout from phasing in a good deal more of them. Without real financial commitments, moreover, transitioning away from fossil fuels will be nearly impossible for poorer countries. A spokesperson for the U.S. delegation to COP28 did not respond to repeated requests for comment as to how it intended to transition away from fossil fuels or help poorer countries do the same.
How can a developed country say with a straight face that ‘1.5 is our overriding priority,’ when they’re the ones who have blown the budget for 1.5, and are continuing to blow it with fossil fuel expansion plans? They’re pushing,” Wu added, “for words on paper that don’t match the action that they’ve taken.”
An energy transition will be especially difficult for countries staring down onerous debt burdens. Just 42 countries have doubled their governmental, corporate, and household debt over the last decade and now carry a combined load of $3.5 trillion. In Nigeria—an OPEC member—debt payments of $7.5 billion exceed government revenues by $900 million.
“The energy transition cannot be just, equitable, or fair if it isn’t funded. Developed countries who are responsible for historical emissions must not only take the lead in reducing current emissions but also provide the adequate climate finance that developing countries need,” Ubrei-Joe Maimoni Mariere, of the Nigerian NGO Environmental Rights Action, wrote in a statement about the end of the talks. “Without finance, the so-called ‘just transition’ put on the table here at COP28 won’t deliver the long-term transformation that is needed in my country, Nigeria, and across Africa.”
According to the U.N. Commission on Trade and Development, about half the world’s population lives in places where debt payments exceed spending on education and health care. The Federal Reserve’s commitment to keeping interest rates higher for longer has worsened that picture. That also makes countries all the more eager to exploit fossil fuels that can be sold off for much-needed U.S. dollars. Multilateral development banks often encourage countries to drill for fossil fuels in exchange for desperately needed funds. As part of its aid package to Argentina—which increased by $7.5 billion this past summer—the International Monetary Fund is directly supporting the development of the country’s massive Vaca Muerta oil and gas fields with the aim of boosting exports.
Colombia—Latin America’s fourth-largest oil producer—is finding out in real time how difficult it is to transition off fossil fuels, as the country’s recently elected left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, has pledged to do. “When our president said he will not sign any new coal or oil contract,” Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad noted during informal talks in Dubai on Monday, “the peso devalued the next day. Credit rating agencies downgraded us. How do we repay our debt? How do we deal with these kinds of contradictions?”
Many more oil- and gas-producing countries will have to follow Colombia’s lead to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The annual Production Gap Report, released last month by the U.N. Environment Program and several other groups, found that the world is on track to produce 110 percent more fossil fuels than is consistent with keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. With COP28, world leaders have finally agreed to call fossil fuels a problem they have no plan for solving.
Other key articles
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/cop28-dubai-marshall-islands-ocean-b2461576.html
Behind the scenes at Cop28 with a negotiator whose nation’s survival is on the line. Louise Boyle spends a day at the global climate summit with Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, who came to Dubai with a very important mission.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/13/what-the-cop28-agreement-says-and-what-it-means
Good Cop, bad Cop: what the Cop28 agreement says and what it means, by Damian Carrington.
"Some say the deal is historic, others that it is weak. We look closely at the text for the truth of the matter."
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/12/13/cop28-un-climate-change-fossil-fuel-finance-results/
Good COP or Bad COP? The future of fossil fuels took center stage at this year’s controversy-laden U.N. climate summit. by Christina Lu.
https://www.ctvc.co/good-cop-bad-cop-3/
"While the record-setting global public-private sector participation offered a signal of hope, the backdrop of oil refineries served a stark reminder of COP's dual nature as a symbol of climate progress and delay."
Somini Sengupta, Reporting from the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
"It took 28 years of climate negotiations for world leaders to agree to wean the global economy from the principal source of climate change: the burning of fossil fuels."
Gaza Genocide Watch
[Editor's note: I am adding this short section to each AfricaFocus as long as the deadly assault in Gaza continues. Links to many additional articles with updates are available at this link.]
https://theintercept.com/2023/12/11/israel-hamas-war-civilians-biden/
“The events of the past week should obliterate any doubt that the war against the Palestinians of Gaza is a joint U.S.–Israeli operation. On Friday, as the Biden administration stood alone among the nations of the world in vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was busy circumventing congressional review to ram through approval of an “emergency” sale of 13,000 tank rounds to Israel.“
https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-civilians-killed
“Israel's public admission that it has killed two civilians in the Gaza Strip for every Hamas militant—a roughly 66% noncombatant death rate—is a major understatement, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Based on preliminary statistics, the Geneva-based nonprofit estimated that at least 90% of the people killed in Israel's assault on Gaza thus far have been civilians, a rate that exceeds those of the U.S. wars on Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as Russia's war on Ukraine.”
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israels-failed-bombing-campaign-gaza
“Since October 7, Israel has invaded northern Gaza with some 40,000 combat troops and pummeled the small area with one of the most intense bombing campaigns in history. Nearly two million people have fled their homes as a result. More than 15,000 civilians (including some 6,000 children and 5,000 women) have been killed in the attacks, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health, and the U.S. State Department has suggested that the true toll may be even higher. Israel has bombed hospitals and ambulances and wrecked about half of northern Gaza’s buildings. It has cut off virtually all water, food deliveries, and electricity generation for Gaza’s 2.2 million inhabitants. By any definition, this campaign counts as a massive act of collective punishment against civilians.”
“Despite nearly two months of heavy military operations—virtually unrestrained by the United States and the rest of the world—Israel has achieved only marginal results. By any meaningful metric, the campaign has not led to Hamas’s even partial defeat. Israel’s air and ground operations have killed as many as 5,000 Hamas fighters (according to Israeli officials), out of a total of about 30,000. … [But] Israel is almost certainly producing more terrorists than it is killing, since each dead civilian will have family and friends eager to join Hamas to exact revenge.”
For additional shorter notes, not sent out by email, but available on the web, visit https://africafocus.substack.com/notes.
Without a doubt a COPout!! But punishment? The richer countrtires are willing to sink the ship for $. What else is new?