Saving the world, or destroying it, takes time. It was only in the 1820s that Joseph Fourier, French mathematician, and polymath discovered that the earth was warmer than expected. Where was that extra heat coming from? Would the temperature continue to rise? Interesting questions! But it would take a century to collect temperature data from around the world to fully understand Climate Change.
Fast forward to 1970, and the first Earth Day. The world had changed since the 1820s. We were in an age of science and industry! Our lives were decades longer than our grandparents. Industry made us rich and gave us “leisure time”, an automobile for every family, plastic and other miraculous materials, and even affordable jet travel. As our standard of living improved we created a “disposable culture”. We could afford to throw away products long before they were used up. Our packaging and containers became more elaborate and indestructible. Earth Day reminded us that all of this progress came at a cost… mountains of garbage, pollution, and a deteriorating environment. Environmentalists existed before Earth Day, but Earth Day was the beginning of the environmental movement.
We once thought that the Earth was so big and powerful that mere humans could never use it up. If early environmentalists had a mantra, it was, “the solution for pollution is dilution.” If we dumped our garbage into a HUGE body of water, like the ocean, nature could somehow cleanse itself and remain pristine. But soon we found our garbage wasn’t disappearing in the ocean, it was just arriving on distant beaches. Climate Change deniers began to tell us that “far away” was “clean enough”. But we began to feel that something wasn’t right.
And then there was EarthRise, a picture taken from the Moon, showing a small, fragile, and definitely finite Earth. Unlike the maps we had grown up with, this image lacked carefully drawn borders separating “them” from “us”, or “here” from “there”. It’s all connected. Pollute any one part, and we’re all in trouble!
Of course, not everyone was won over by environmental thinking. As Climate Change accelerated, visible damage started to appear everywhere. Glaciers were melting, land was flooding, water sources were drying up, and our plentiful Ocean no longer had enough fish. Still, many individuals and organizations denied the evidence and delayed any action.
As the world grew wealthier, we also grew more educated, and more people understood the complexity of Climate Change. Politicians worked with industry to tell a story where cleaning the environment would cost money and jobs. But this story ignored the costs of Climate Change. Scientists soon discovered that the economic cost of Climat Change would soon exceed the cost of fixing the problem. The petroleum industry (a major polluter) tried to discredit or dismiss the evidence. And it worked… for a while. But warnings from the academics were soon joined by the military, the insurance industry, city planners, and big agricultural. These credible mainstream leaders, were in industries that would take the brunt of Climate Change, and the costs. Many industries began to realize that the cost of doing nothing would soon cost the global economy trillions of dollars every year.
And the world changed again. Eventually, major Climate Change deniers like ExxonMobile, publically agreed that Climate Change is real AND that action must be taken to reduce it. It is now easy to find former deniers saying that now believe in Climate Change. Yet, it’s truly difficult to find anyone amongst these new believers that have committed to pay for solutions.
In 1995, COP-1’s mission was to get the world to accept that Global Climate Change was real and needed to be fixed. It took years and many more conferences, but they achieved this goal. Today, even children know what Climate Change is. COP-26 must move beyond awareness and focus on actions. Will attendees agree to solutions and clearly define the costs? Not according to Greta Thunberg, the undeniable superstar of the Glasglow conference.
Greta Thunberg declared the conference a complete failure, and chose not to attend the conference. Greta said that the conference was co-opted by corporations, excluded the poorest and most impacted groups, and was filled with “blah-blah-blah” politicians who were more eager for photo opportunities than meaningful environmental agreements. Harsh words, but with quite a lot of truth behind them.
Confirming Greta’s greatest fears, an activist group at COP-26 (Global Witness) reported that the largest number of conference participants came from the petroleum industry. While any meaningful solutions for Climate Change MUST include participation by political and industry leaders, will these same leaders always try to control the solutions and (more importantly) take over any funding for those solutions? Yes. Yes, they will.
If we go back to ExxonMobile’s Webpage, right after they agree that Climate Change is an issue, they try to sell their new technology, massive factories that can clean the CO2 out of our air. Their solution is to get consumers to force governments to require their new technology. Instead of simply not polluting, they see pollution as an economic opportunity. Does that make you just the slightest bit suspicious? If their solutions don’t work, they will still get paid? Will they develop even more dubious products?
This brings us to Bjørn Lomborg, Denmark’s most famous environmental thinker. Lomborg is a political scientist who views Climate Change as a cost-benefit issue. Climate Change is just one of many global problems facing us. Food security, health care, education, and global poverty cause more deaths and are arguably more immediate than Climate Change. What do we fix first? Should we start with the problem that provides the greatest benefits at the lowest cost?
Cost is ALWAY an issue for governments and corporations. Lomborg believes that investing in new technologies is the best way to solve Climate Change. He also argues that “cap & trade” and other popular carbon reduction solutions are not a good investment, and actively harm the poor. Especially in Africa and Asia, where most of the world’s population growth will occur over the next 50 years. If poverty is the world’s greatest killer, shouldn’t this be our highest priority? It may seem heretical, but it may also be true.
Many studies agree that affordable energy is the key to eliminating poverty, even though early-stage economic development may rely on polluting fuels. As nations get richer, they can afford to impose regulations to reduce pollution. Can the world reduce pollution by INCREASING today’s use of polluting fuels?
Maybe! The biggest good news at COP-26 was that the US’s huge decrease in CO2 emissions. But didn’t the US drop out of the Paris Accords? Isn’t America synonymous with Climate denial? Didn’t the Trump administration roll-back environmental regulations? How did we become the leader for global environmentalism?
It’s all about coal. Coal is highly polluting. Another plentiful fossil fuel, natural gas, is far less polluting. Over the last decade, the cost of natural gas in the US fell dramatically. This allowed 300 US coal-fired power plants to switch to natural gas or to shut down. Was renewable solar and wind power responsible? Nope. It was… FRACKING! The US now has so much cheap natural gas from Fracking that we’re able to export over 5 trillion cubic feet every year. Can natural gas become the world’s most powerful tool for reducing carbon emissions?
Let’s get back to the issue of poverty. Over 700 million human beings are extremely poor, resulting in death from: bad water (nearly 1 million annually), childbirth (500,000), childhood starvation (6 million), and childhood diseases (2 million). Extreme poverty also denies basic education to 114 million children and 584 million women. Without education, few economies can develop. Most economists agree that global poverty could be solved for $50 to $100 billion annually.
Is this an absurdly large number? Compare it to the more than $450 billion the world spends annually on coffee. If we gave up coffee once or twice a week, it would pay for the elimination of poverty. Do that for the next 20 years, and we’d have a new generation of healthy, educated, and employed citizens. This could permanently raise the world’s poorest nations out of poverty. All for $6,000 to $10,000 per life saved.
Compare this to the estimated 5 million lives lost annually due to Climate Change. Solving Climate Change will cost $1 to $2 trillion annually, annually, or $200,000 to $400,000 per life saved. But this payment would only hold back further change, not wipe out the last century of damage. These payments would also need to continue… forever.
If that’s the big picture, what are the details of COP-26? With so much at stake, what has this conference been able to accomplish?
New Agreements: COP-20 yielded the Paris Accords. COP-26 was to give us the Glasgow Climate Pact. The biggest accomplishment from Glasgow was to say that we should reduce the use of coal. At some point. After several edits from the US, China, and the coal industry the wording went from “phase out coal”, to “phase-down coal”, to the final “phase-down unabated coal”. What is “unabated coal”? It may be an attempt to escape regulation by filling agreements with undefined and unenforceable conditions.
Timeline: Attendees at COP-26 agreed to speed one thing up. Instead of each nation announcing national commitments to carbon reduction in 2030, they will do it next year. If this isn’t just an agreement to agree to something… eventually, it could be real progress.
Funding: When we eventually identify solutions, who will pay? Probably not governments. They are ceding control to private money, such as the “Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero” (GFANZ). They claim to have a committed pool of $130 trillion, from banks, financial institutions, and insurance businesses. Good to see businesses stepping up, but also a bit worrying. We’ll know more when they announce which solutions they plan to adopt.
Solutions: Was there an agreement on the specific solutions we will pursue? Nope. No specific solutions. No metrics to show us if we’re making progress. But, that’s why we’ll have COP-27, right?
Conclusion: That’s a tough one. The issue has always been “who will pay what”. Will we give up plastic, fossil fuels, heavy industry, and pay more for everyday goods? Will corporations give up any profits to clean up the environment?
We still have a long way to go, and the clock is ticking. Will COP-27, or COP-28, or COP-100 come up with a way to the environment while we still have time? What do you think? Where do you stand on the environment? Let us know!