Cop out at COP28

The ill-effects of climate change are no longer theoretical, they are everyday lived experience

Alok Tiwari

As the climate summit COP28 being held in Dubai enters its final day, the oil lobby is looking like having its way. There was a lot of quibbling about including the “phase out of fossil fuels” as one of the goals in the deal. You don’t get to include such language when your host is one of the major oil producers of the world. So, the latest draft has reportedly watered it down to “phase down of fossil fuels”. What gets included in final document or, indeed, if there will be a final document remains to be seen. It will be par for the course if the phrase is left out in its entirety or watered down to such an extent as to be meaningless. Some deal may emerge allowing everyone to claim victory. But you can be sure humans will appear defeated.

All multilateral deals are necessarily a result of compromise between various competing interests and contradictory goals. They are driven by a desire to have some agreement rather than no agreement at all. Different countries have different priorities and conditions and no leader would like to be seen as having sold out their nation’s interest for larger good. Such compromises may be acceptable in trade or arms control negotiations. There is always a possibility of improving the deal later when benefits of even half-baked steps become apparent. This luxury is not available in case of climate deal.

As the cliché goes, the best time to act on climate change was 20 years ago. The next best is today. And tomorrow will be definitely too late. The ill effects of climate change are no longer theoretical. They are now everyday lived experiences of people across the world. They are no longer confined to disappearing Arctic ice or super-sized icebergs braking off from Antarctica. They can be seen in recent deluge at Chennai or unusually heavy September rains that drowned Nagpur. Hurricanes across the world are getting stronger, wildfires more frequent and more extensive, rainfall less predictable. Temperatures are touching record highs even in places known for cold.

It is only a matter of time before parts of the world become uninhabitable for humans. Agriculture is in imminent danger of collapse. And the window to correct this is not a few decades wide but a few years. Even if the dire predictions of scientists only partially come true, it would trigger devastation on an unprecedented scale resulting in mass emigration, climate refugee crises, even wars. The worst effects are anticipated in most populated places on Earth. Consequences are too terrible even to contemplate. If all this sounds like doomsday talk, you bet it is. Of course, there are still climate deniers who would present spurious WhatsApp University arguments to tell you all is well. But then there are still people arguing the Earth is flat.

Where does this leave us with climate deal? With the world leaders treating these negotiations like any other, there is little chance of a viable action plan emerging. Some progress will be made but not enough. Some steps will be taken but they are likely to be too late too little. It does appear that the most intelligent species ever to walk the planet is zombie-walking into a terminal crisis of its own making. It is so fragmented and so adamant that nobody can put common interest above their own. We would rather die together than suffer an individual setback. Everyone is continuing to protect their individual industries, individual economies, individual lifestyle hoping that the catastrophic scenarios will make others concede ground. Poor countries demand money for mitigation measures blaming the rich countries for creating the crisis in the first place. The rich are loath to give resources or technology blaming lack of action and misplaced priorities among the poor countries. Even when they promise some money, they rarely actually give it.

As we argue the world inches ever closer to disaster. Many scientists believe we may have already be past the tipping point when global climate enters a self-perpetuating cycle of warming that may be nearly impossible to reverse. If this is true, it makes our long-drawn debates, discussions, and summits that much idiotic. It is sad because solutions and technology for dealing with climate crisis already exist. It is only a desire to protect the short-term interests that are preventing nations from adopting them whole hog. Yes, doing so would cause disruption in existing industries. But this disruption would be far smaller and far easier to manage than the disruption that climate change would cause, is already causing.

A big reason for this is that everyone has seen the climate change as a threat to escape from rather than an opportunity to capitalize on. The world has latched on to the renewable energy bandwagon, but it did so half-heartedly and only when the costs became so low that it was impossible to ignore. Even then, the conventional thermal energy continues to be ramped up. Now the excuse is that renewables are intermittent and you need coal-fired plants to assure base supply. Today, mass power storage technology, which would solve intermittence problem, is where solar and wind energy generation were a decade ago. It is open for nations to seize this opportunity. It would not only save lives and economy but also create jobs, millions of them.

It is true for many other sectors. We know high speed railways are better than flights, but we continue to build more planes and airports than rail links. We know public transport is better, but we continue to protect car industry and make cities more auto friendly than pedestrian and cycle friendly. We know we need to preserve ecosystems, plant trees, and have green spaces but we continue to chase mirage of development that causes destruction of all these. We may be clever, but are we wise?

This column appeared in Lokmat Times on Dec 13, 2023