EDITORIAL: Glasgow Goners
Madagascar could have the “world’s first climate change famine.” (Flicker)
The views expressed herein represent the views of a majority of the members of the Caravel’s Editorial Board and are not reflective of the position of any individual member, the newsroom staff, or Georgetown University.
As the U.K. convened the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in early November, tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets of Glasgow. Activists, NGO representatives, students, Indigenous leaders, and farmers alike called on leaders to make more than minor, piecemeal reforms that are too narrow to effect real change to emissions trajectories. Many low-income countries, often those most at risk of climate disaster despite their statistically insignificant contributions to pollution, have also decried COP26 and other climate agreements’ modest targets. Together, they are challenging the sad status quo of climate change action.
The lack of urgency with which leaders approach the climate crisis is indefensible. Yet COP26, with its cheery rhetoric surrounding negotiable, inadequate goals that require minimal effort for wealthy countries to meet, reinforces the failure of international governance arrangements to prioritize those most impacted by global threats. Without decisive action, the world’s leaders risk causing irreversible climate damage. But wealth and industrial interests demonstrated that they still take top priority in what has become everyone else’s fight for survival.
Symbolism without Power
Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister made his speech at COP26 knee-deep in water. Many Pacific island states were unable to attend COP26 due to concerns about COVID-19, so Minister Simon Kofe delivered his video speech on what used to be dry land. His point was clear: waters around Pacific island countries are rising much too fast, threatening to submerge many island states.
Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr. underscored that point, bluntly declaring in his speech, “Frankly speaking, there is no dignity to a slow and painful death. You might as well bomb our islands instead of making us suffer.”
But COP26’s final agreement did not do much for endangered countries like Tuvalu and Palau. They and other less powerful states have been hit hardest by climate change—yet their voices remained stifled at COP26.
The Glasgow climate pact addresses only a few points: it calls upon “multilateral development banks, other financial institutions and the private sector to enhance finance mobilization,” and it accelerates “efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.” This marked the first time a UN climate agreement had used the words “coal” or “fossil fuel.”
However, phasing down the usage of coal and fossil fuels is a gross underreaction. Worse, the agreement fails to specifically put financial pressure on countries in a position to make those changes. Scientists say that even if these agreements are fully put into effect, they are nowhere near enough of a change to limit global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. The Glasgow climate pact also failed to address climate reparations for poorer countries that have been and will continue to be harder hit by climate catastrophes they never helped create. COP26, now that it’s over, seems like it was all about strong but vague recommendations for action without concrete steps to that end.
Happy Private Finance Day!
November 3 was “private finance day” at COP26. A group of prominent private banks, insurers, and investors promised $130 trillion toward climate-neutral investments over the next thirty years. But, as economic historian Adam Tooze clarifies in his podcast on Foreign Policy, this commitment is not magnanimous economic self-restraint. The $130 trillion promise is stretched out until 2050; according to cited climate scientists, policymakers only have until 2030 to stop the worst effects of climate change. The CEOs making these commitments likely won’t be alive to be held accountable by the time their promises come due.
By promising the money that governments currently seem unwilling to invest, private financial institutions get to write the rules of what counts as a good “green” or “carbon-neutral” investment. Considering how investigations have revealed that many carbon-neutral investments are actually carbon-positive, the climate doesn’t even benefit. Pledges of “carbon neutrality” don’t necessarily require emissions reductions. Instead, they usually include promises to purchase carbon offsets in land or planting trees. But offsets can push people off land; sometimes they aren’t even really offsets. And planting trees for later hardly counters emissions today.
The other solution private finance seeks is a global carbon price, which is something the IMF strongly recommends. Its simplicity hides dangers: critical macroeconomist Daniela Gabor and economic historian Isabella Weber liken carbon pricing—most likely through carbon taxes and the ending of fuel subsidies—to shock therapy, arguing that it not only forces the burdens of decarbonization onto the poor, but it allows private financiers to direct investment in ways that benefit them most, as they did in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. Even ignoring these criticisms, existing carbon pricing systems have actually created more pollution.
Trusting private finance to solve the climate crisis is especially brazen given that it has exacerbated the crisis. 93 banks, for example, signed onto the Rainforest Action Network while simultaneously underwriting $575 billion in fossil fuel investments. Absent government action, their hypocrisy goes unchallenged. Our states need to step in and step up.
Concrete Solutions
So much of the technology required to slow climate change already exists; governments just need to invest in the right places. Shifting power generation to green energy sources is one of the greenest things countries could do, and the technologies are feasible. Of course, this would require politicians to stop acquiescing to fossil fuel lobbyists. The shift to green energy could generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs and protect the world from the disastrous effects of climate change. Governments need to reach out and take advantage of available technologies.
Several other technological advances could also help in the battle against climate change. Something as simple as urban tree corridors would create green spaces in cities, thereby reducing urban temperatures by more than three degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists have also created a “green” cement that could lower CO2 emissions by 1.5 gigatons and save three trillion gallons of water annually in the cement industry. Hydrogen-powered ships and electric airplanes could address the high carbon costs of travel and shipping. The green future humanity deserves is here.
Scientists have argued that reversing carbon emissions is a critical step to avoid climate disaster, and carbon capture is one of the main goals climate engineers have today. NASA recently demonstrated how technology that splits CO2 into oxygen and carbon, originally designed for Mars missions, could be used for such processes.
While governments argue over who has the largest duty to address climate change, the technology that could slow or stop the process of global warming is here. It’s time to stop penny-pinching and make substantial changes that could save lives and the planet.
Who Pays for Climate Change?
As world leaders twiddle their thumbs, billions around the world will suffer. Columbia University's Earth Institute estimated in 2021 that around 83 billion cumulative worldwide deaths could occur from climate change by 2050. These effects will be felt unevenly across the world: the countries that contribute the least to greenhouse gases will face the harshest consequences. While the United States, Canada, and Western Europe will likely have the most economic resilience to climate change, the Swiss Re Institute predicted that southern Asia, southeastern Asia, and Latin America will suffer the most drastic mortality, health, and economic losses. The ongoing famine in Madagascar is just one example of the calamities yet to come.
While wealthier countries and institutions seek to preserve their status and profit, low-income countries will disproportionately suffer the effects of climate change despite being some of the actors least responsible for the crisis. Famines, droughts, fires, rising waters, extreme weather events, and climate-induced migration will only grow more severe if those with power continue to make vague commitments filled with the bare minimum of action required. Some people may think it’s great that private financial institutions appear to be stepping in to fill the gap left by the world’s governments—but the more that situation is examined, the worse that seems.
The technology to make the world a greener place already exists. It’s obvious what has to be done. The world almost made tangible progress toward addressing climate change in the 1980s, but those with authority failed to listen to scientists and failed to take action. Let’s not let another opportunity pass us by.
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