COP28 is the first time ever a worldwide agreement named a post fossil fuel future
In the past it took world wars and millions and millions of dead to get the world to work together. Now we're seeing an emerging consensus, yes slow and yes, delayed by a few oil nations, but it here.
Getting large groups of people to all work together can be hard. As soon as you’ve got more that two people, it becomes a game of herding cats. Scale this out to a country and getting unanimity is almost impossible - hence democracies aim for agreement by majorities in general whilst autocracies solve the issue by bludgeoning people into a direction regardless of what the population might want.
Now scale challenge of unanimity out into groups of countries and all it is harder still as we stack challenge upon challenge due to growing scale and layers. It can be done however; the first major intergovernmental organisation was the League of Nations, founded back in 1920. The impetus of its founding was World War 1: That’s right it took a global conflict the likes of which had never been seen before, with around 20 million dead and about the same number wounded, to finally get countries to sign on to working together for peace.
It only lasted until 1939 and the next global conflict, World War 2. At the end of this even more horrific and brutal conflict, with 15 million dead in battle and another 25 million wounded in battle and around 45 million civilian dead (and possibly many more!) there was a new impetus for a new global organisation aimed at working together for peace. That was the United Nations.
The climate meetings (COP) of which COP28 is just the latest, are born out of the United Nations mandate. What was achieved where was an important step in the right direction (even though it was not enough and should have happened decades ago) along the framework of the successful ban on CFCs in the late 80s (also via a UN mandate).
(Photo: Samjith Palakkool/UNCTAD)
However the CFC ban was made somewhat easier by not having whole nations whose entire economy was based on the continued existence of CFCs. As the famous phrase goes;
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
The task of any COP meeting is much harder because, as I noted, getting a bunch of countries to act together is really hard anyway, but harder still because a bunch of countries ‘salaries’ depend on not ‘understanding’ that we need to end the age of fossil fuels asap. (This is why they have gone to such huge efforts to capture the COP process.)
However, what has come out of COP28 is that despite the host nation and a gaggle of its oil-addicted cronies' frenzied watering down and down of the text, is that there is now a global agreement that we need to stop fossil fuels. Sure it is not what it should be, but it is momentus all the same. As Heatmap.news put it:
The agreement avoids the contentious “phase out” wording that nearly derailed the climate talks earlier. But it does call on countries to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels this decade in pursuit of achieving net zero by 2050. This marks the first time a post-oil and gas future has been mentioned in a COP agreement, something that would have been “unthinkable just two years ago,” said Business Green’s James Murray.
This focus on fossil fuels was a point echoed over in New Scientist too. Indeed the tensions in the agreement are well framed by Bill Mckibben as thus:
What I’m trying to say is, today’s agreement is literally meaningless — and potentially meaningful. But the diplomats are done now — the rest of us are going to have to supply that meaning.
If you dig beneath the COP28 articles, you can find plenty of example sof how that meaning is taking shape globally. For example now over 40 trillion (yes with a ‘t’) is assets have been divested from fossil fuels;
More than 1,600 institutions like universities, pension funds, and governments that hold more than $40.6 trillion in assets have now divested from fossil fuels, the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement announced Friday.
Here’s a few more interesting items;
Australians' use of coal power stations is expected to end 5 years earlier than previous thought.
Google is now using geothermal energy to power some of its data centres.
Also in the US, Native American communities are building renewable energy, in this example solar.
Also in the US: There is a growing block of older voters for whom the climate is a major issue. (Be interesting to know if we see this in other countries?)
The ongoing march of technological innovation in renewable energy, in this example it is wind.
(Image via here)