Tag Archives: loss and damage

The Sins of the Fathers

CarbonBrief is at it again


From Climate Scepticism

BY MARK HODGSON

Not satisfied with its dubious piece: “Analysis: Record-low price for UK offshore wind is nine times cheaper than gas” , CarbonBrief recently decided to seek to ensure that Britain’s falling down the rankings of cumulative greenhouse gas emitters is reversed. After all, it’s essential that we here in the UK are made to pay for climate change, even if China has emitted more greenhouse gases in the last eight years than the UK has done since the industrial revolution. Or, to put it another way (as the BBC did as long ago as May 2021): “China emissions exceed all developed nations combined”.

Still, never mind all that, China is a developing country – apparently – so we must go easy on them. No, it’s you and me who have to pay, and here’s why. It’s because we have to take colonial rule into account. And (this is the good bit if you hate the west and love India and China), when we attribute all greenhouse gas emissions from colonial countries to their colonial masters, hey presto! Suddenly the situation looks very different. OK, the USA still tops the cumulative league tables, and China is still in second place, but France’s share increases by half, the UK’s doubles [so the article says, but persevere with the article, and actually it increases by 70%, which is a long way from doubling], the Netherlands’ nearly triples, Portugal’s more than triples, and the EU and the UK collectively see their contributions rise by “nearly a third”, to 19% [later on the article says they rise by 28%, which is nearer to a quarter than to a third. I struggle to take seriously an article with such internal contradictions].

And that’s not all. India’s share falls by 15%, while Indonesia and the whole continent of Africa also see their contributions fall by 24%. Isn’t that great? Now they can play the victim card with ever greater confidence, and it’s so much harder to blame them for anything. We can conveniently ignore the fact that India is now the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter on an annual basis, we can concentrate instead on the fact cumulatively it now drops to seventh place. Instead, the UK is in fourth place (leaping up from eighth place, and helpfully leap-frogging India in the process) and Germany is in sixth (sadly moving up only from seventh place, but I suppose it’s better than nothing). Excellent – make them pay!

There’s another sleight of hand that can be used to make the situation even worse for those former colonialists:

When weighted by current populations, the Netherlands (2,014tCO2 per person) and the UK (1,922tCO2) become the world’s top emitters on a cumulative per-capita basis. They are followed by Russia (1,655tCO2), the US (1,560tCO2) and Canada (1,524tCO2).

On this per-capita measure, China (217tCO2 per person), the continent of Africa (92tCO2) and India (52tCO2) are far behind developed nations’ contributions to warming.

This handily side-steps the fact that China’s current day per capita emissions are higher – more than 50% higher – than those in the UK.

Finally, give those former colonial powers a good kicking while they’re down:

Many former colonial powers are also net CO2 importers today. While data on CO2 imports and exports is limited, available figures further raise their shares of historical emissions.

Regarding that last point, not only would I – in fairness – concede that there’s something in it, it’s a point I have in the past made myself. I think it’s probably the best argument in the whole CarbonBrief piece.

The problem with the main thesis is that it largely seems to be based upon deforestation taking place under colonial rule. The issue here is that it seems to attribute it all to the decision-making power of the colonial master in each case, regardless of the reason the deforestation took place or of who ordered it. It seems historically ignorant, given how much of – for instance – modern-day India’s day-to-day rule under the British Empire was left to Indian princes. Thus, to attribute everything that went on in India during this period to the UK is simply inaccurate.

CarbonBrief’s analysis seems to assume that native rulers and inhabitants failed to receive any benefit from what went on in their lands during the colonial period, and it denies them any agency at all. It is in fact an analysis based on a colonialist mindset that assumes the locals could do – and did – nothing for themselves and the Europeans did everything, decided everything, and were the only beneficiaries. Clearly this isn’t the case.

CarbonBrief knows this, saying:

Arguably, the true share of responsibility for current warming lies somewhere between these two extremes, where emissions are fully assigned to either the colonial powers or their former colonies.

Arguably it does, but it doesn’t seem to be how CarbonBrief’s final analysis pans out. Instead, it’s all our fault:

This analysis assigns full responsibility for past emissions to those with ultimate decision-making authority at the time, namely, the colonial rulers.

CarbonBrief purport to rely heavily on the ideas expressed by Professor Beinert and Lotte Hughes in their 2007 book “Environment and Empire”, and sections of it are quoted about the colonial powers’ hunger for natural resources, which is fair enough, so far as it goes. Strangely, however, another more noble point is made:

Yet, as colonial forests were denuded of their ability to produce high-quality timber, colonisation also led to the beginnings of “conservationist practices and ideas”, Beinart and Hughes write:

“[W]hile natural resources have been intensely exploited, a related process, the rise of conservationist practices and ideas, was also deeply rooted in imperial history. Large tracts of land have been reserved for forests, national parks or wildlife.”

And it seems that the locals were not perhaps as denied of agency (or responsibility for forestry) as has been implied, since we are also told:

The book quotes Hugh Cleghorn, conservator of forests for the Madras presidency, writing in 1861 of the “careless rapacity of the native population…who cut and cleared [forests]…without being in any way under the control or regulation of authority”.

We seem to receive no (carbon) credit for putting an end to that with the creation of an Indian Forest Department in 1864, even though surely credit is due?

And although the next quote is thrown in presumably to damn the British, it actually strikes me as being rather more exculpatory than damning (at least so far as deforestation and associated greenhouse gas emissions are concerned):

“British imperial control of India had a major impact on its extraordinarily varied range of trees and forest products. It also restricted access to forests by poor people…That later exclusion of humans from wildlife parks was also partly rooted in the forest laws of the colonial people, which treated local people as wasteful and destructive…But pressures on the forest did not end with independence. The current rate of deforestation is said to be well over one million ha every year.”

A similar point could be made regarding the behaviour of the Dutch in Indonesia. (The poor Dutch, by the way, move up from somewhere below 35 on the cumulative emissions scale to thirteenth place).

We are treated to another quote:

The Dutch discovered the tobacco industry in Deli in the 1860s and created an industrial-scale plantation system. The local sultans collaborated and gave concessions of 1,000–2,000 hectares of land to each company in a 75-year lease. The Dutch colonial planters assumed that tobacco could only grow well in the soil that had just been cleared from the virgin jungle. Thus, the industry drove large-scale virgin forests clearing to produce tobacco leaves exported to Europe and America.”

So who is responsible? The Dutch colonial planters or the local sultans who leased them the land? Or should responsibility be shared?

Be that all as it may, CarbonBrief really make hay with the concept of historical per capita assumptions. Obviously if countries with large populations (such as India or Indonesia) can transfer a great deal of responsibility for their emissions to countries with much smaller populations (such as the UK or the Netherlands) then a massively distorted result can be obtained. And so it is, and CarbonBrief loves it. It tells us that on this (rather convoluted) basis, colonial powers are the top cumulative emitters per population in 2023, while the likes of China and India are far behind.

I have to say, it takes overwhelming chutzpah to give China a free pass in this way, given that it is the second greatest cumulative emitter of greenhouse gas emissions (behind only the USA), that its current day per capita emissions greatly exceed those of the UK, and that it is building new coal-fired power stations at a rate of knots. Despite all that, on this clever new basis of allocating responsibility for emissions, China has less than one eighth of the responsibility of the Netherlands, India appears to have barely 5% of the responsibility of the UK. Surely even CarbonBrief appreciate that this is an illegitimate piece of legerdemain?

Interestingly, the analysis seeks only to attribute responsibility from 1850, citing incomplete data among other reasons for this decision. However, read to the end of the article, and perhaps China isn’t so innocent after all (though of course this piece of information is omitted from the final figures in the analysis):

The picture is a little different for LULUCF. Figures from OSCAR, one of the three bookkeeping models used for post-1850 LULUCF estimates, extend back as far as 1701.

These figures show that some 93GtCO2 was released globally, during 1750-1850, equivalent to nearly 4% of the cumulative total from all sources during 1850-2023.

Nearly a quarter of this total originates in China and would not be reassigned on the basis of colonial rule.

But ignoring this in the analysis is OK, because “1850 is usually taken as the reference year for historical simulations and marks the starting point for temperature changes, which are generally measured against an 1850-1900 baseline.” Phew – that was close!

I conclude that the analysis is undoubtedly of interest, and I enjoyed reading it (honestly). However, it strikes me that its main purpose – especially given the timing of its release (26th November 2023) was to provide ammunition to developing countries with huge carbon footprints ahead of the “loss and damage” negotiations that are taking place at COP28. My only consolation is that it will probably prove to have been a waste of the authors’ time, insofar as they may have hoped that it would facilitate payment, based on climate guilt, from developed to developing countries. I very much doubt that this will come to pass.

UN COP 28: Have we dodged the loss and damage threat again?

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – NOVEMBER 30: Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber (C), President of the UNFCCC COP28 Climate Conference, attends the opening session of the conference shortly after he was confirmed COP28 president on November 30, 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The COP28, which is running from November 30 through December 12, is bringing together stakeholders, including international heads of state and other leaders, scientists, environmentalists, indigenous peoples representatives, activists and others to discuss and agree on the implementation of global measures towards mitigating the effects of climate change. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

By David Wojick

As regular readers know, I have been tracking the U.N. development of the so-called “loss and damage” issue for several years. This has been a very dangerous concept.

As promoted by the extreme alarmists, it contemplates America and other developed countries paying trillions of dollars in reparations to developing countries for the supposed damages due to climate change we have caused. There have been future damage estimates as high as $400 trillion.

At COP 27 last year, an official loss and damage fund was launched but with no specific nature. That chore was left to today’s COP 28, and it has now been done, at least a very important little bit.

Happily, the official COP decision on the loss and damage fund has now been made, and it appears harmless. I sigh with relief.

Contributions to the fund are completely voluntary. There is no claim of reparation, obligation, compensation, nothing like that. It is simply a mechanism for rendering foreign aid for natural disasters. The agreement says this: “…funding arrangements, including a fund, for responding to loss and damage are based on cooperation and facilitation and do not involve liability or compensation.”

Of course, the alarmists are going to continue to describe it as a reparation fund, but that is just the usual hype. There is no there there.

Given that the US foreign aid budget runs around $30 billion a year, there should be no problem running a bit of that through the loss and damage fund, if and when it finally gears up. Initial contributions from various countries are running between $100 million and $10 million, which is almost nothing. My understanding is the US is kicking in a trivial $17.5 million. I suspect the US Government spends that much a year on unused airplane tickets.

Nor is this $100 million a year just a single donation. The UN’s flagship Green Fund only gets about $9 billion every five years, which is just $2 billion a year. If loss and damage do that well it is still insignificant compared to the $400 trillion hype. So, for now the loss and damage threat has simply ceased to exist. It consists of voluntary peanuts.

Mind you, one big fight lies ahead, but America and the other developed countries may have little to do with it. The monster question is, who gets these peanuts?

Pretty much every country gets bad weather, which is what loss and damage funds are supposed to cover. Taken together, the developing countries’s losses and damages are huge compared to the likely funding. So, who is going to get what little there is?

The COP decision is perfectly silent on the substance of this fundamental question. But we do have a procedure of sorts.

First, there will be created a Board to oversee the fund, which should be a contentious process in itself. Then, the Board is supposed to develop the rules, which at some point have to include who qualifies to get funded for their losses and/or damages.

However, what the Board decides is then subject to the approval of the next COP, which is likely to be where the real fight happens. Given that every country that is not going to get funded can veto giving some other country funding, this could be a protracted process. It might even be unresolvable.

In fact, we have a bit of a model for an impasse. The next COP is supposed to be in Eastern Europe, but no agreement on where can be reached because every possibility has been vetoed to date.

I am not making this up. Getting every Eastern European country to agree on who, instead of them, should get the enormous cash flow of  70,000 two-week visitors may not be possible. This one-shot COP income may well exceed all the loss and damage funding. It would be hilarious if COP 29 did not occur for this reason.

In any case, the news is great. The extremely dangerous loss and damage issue has been rendered harmless. It might even be paralyzed. One can hope, and time will tell.

The post UN COP 28: Have we dodged the loss and damage threat again? appeared first on CFACT.

UN reshuffling old climate alarmist song-and-dance at COP28

By: Craig Rucker

As it has been doing for decades, the United Nations is once again planning to hold its annual “Conference of the Parties” (COP28) to tell the world we face impending doom from manmade climate change.

Over the next two weeks, expect to see news reports covering how brave delegates, flying in on private jets to glitzy Dubai, are hard at work protecting us from the SUVs, gas ovens, red meat, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, plastics and other fossil-fuel consumer products we foolishly enjoy.  Human Events has the Story.

Having attended some 25 of these COP meetings, I expect few surprises.  But that doesn’t mean there won’t be some oddities. Among them is that the United Arab Emirates has been chosen to host the COP-28 confab. That sounds like a joke, but it’s not.

As everyone knows, the climate cabal is all about limiting fossil fuels. The UAE, on the other hand, is all about producing and using them. A lot of them.

In fact, last year the UAE employed fossil fuels: 607.25 terawatt-hours of oil and 698.48 TWh of gas, to meet over 95 percent of its electricity consumption. Solar and wind, by contrast, supplied a minuscule fraction of that, less than 20 TWh (barely 1 percent).

Making matters worse for climate worrywarts, the UAE is also planning to surge its development of fossil fuels.  According to the UK Guardian,  ADNOC (the UAE’s national oil company) “announced a $150bn investment over five years to enable an ‘accelerated growth strategy’ for oil and gas production.” 

One might think ADNOC’s president, Sultan Al Jaber, would be run out of town by the climate faithful for making such a proclamation. But they’re doing nothing. In fact, he’s set to preside over COP-28.

The big news at this year’s conference will likely center on its attendees. King Charles III, who famously predicted in 2019 that the world only had 18 months to save our planet from climate change, is set to give the opening address. He will be joined by Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and potentially Pope Francis. Notably missing are the leaders of the two biggest carbon-emitting nations, China and United States. 

Both President Biden and President Xi will stay home, but they did meet right beforehand to discuss climate change during their November powwow in San Francisco. Both pledged to “work together … to rise up to one of the greatest challenges of our time.” What this actually means is unclear.

Some experts believe all that was achieved during their San Francisco rendezvous was that the U.S. pledged to gut its fossil-fuel infrastructure and replace it with unreliable solar and wind. China only agreed to sell us the equipment to make that happen.

This is the hard, rarely mentioned reality, since China already controls 40% of the polysilicon used to make solar panels, 70% of the lithium-ion battery cell production, and 80% of the globe’s rare earth elements.

What it clearly doesn’t mean is that China is planning to limit its fossil fuel use anytime soon.  In 2022, for example, China built or issued permits for the construction of brand new coal plants at the rate of two per week, quadrupling the number of new coal power approvals. Overall, it is constructing six times more coal plants than the rest of the world combined.  That Xi is losing sleep over climate change or carbon emissions seems a stretch.

Other things to look for at COP-28 are the “Global Stocktake” and financing a new “Loss and Damage” fund.

The Global Stocktake is a review of how nations are meeting their climate commitment goals.  According to the Paris Climate Accord, each country is supposed to do what it can to keep the world from reaching a 2-degree Celsius warming (or 1.5-degree C if they want extra credit).

Although this is scientific nonsense, the Global Stocktake can be seen as a sort of “report card” on how countries are faring. Expect the USA and Europe to be sent to the principal’s office for bad behavior, while China and India receive kudos for simply pledging to do better in the distant future.

The Loss and Damage fund is supposed to compensate poorer countries for any climate hardships (droughts, floods, hurricanes, refugees, et cetera) they believe are imposed on them by richer nations that have used fossil fuels for a century or more. 

Among the countries vociferously championing this idea is the island of Tuvalu, which claims it is sinking into the ocean like Atlantis from rising sea levels.  In reality, the University of Auckland found that Tuvalu actually grew in land mass by 2.9 percent over the past 40 years.  While this might calm their fears, don’t expect it to stymie Tuvalu’s efforts to get money out of wealthier countries anyway.

So there you have it. The world is set to endure another fancy UN shindig about climate change. Be prepared for the lectures, dire warnings and proclamations. Annoying, yes. But don’t let the charade ruin your holiday season.

This article originally appeared at Human Events

Climate “Loss and Damage”: Political, Not Scientific Notion

Draft resolution on a ‘loss and damage fund’ has attracted more than $400 million, but climate-vulnerable countries say more cash is needed.

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – NOVEMBER 30: Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber (C), President of the UNFCCC COP28 Climate Conference, attends the opening session of the conference shortly after he was confirmed COP28 president on November 30, 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The COP28, which is running from November 30 through December 12, is bringing together stakeholders, including international heads of state and other leaders, scientists, environmentalists, indigenous peoples representatives, activists and others to discuss and agree on the implementation of global measures towards mitigating the effects of climate change. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

The media is replete with announcements of a “breakthrough” agreement at COP28 to make “operational” a fund through which “developed” countries compensate “developing” countries for “loss and damage” from “climate change.”  The six terms in quotations highlight the ambiguity depending on how those words are defined.  Let’s start with “breakthrough “, “operational” and “developed” vs. “developing” countries.

From Nature: First cash pledged for countries devastated by climate change: COP28 starts with historic decision. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Draft resolution on a ‘loss and damage fund’ has attracted more than
$400 million, but climate-vulnerable countries say more cash is needed.

Researchers and campaigners welcomed the move, while recognizing that much more is needed and that pledges are not the same as money in the bank.  “It remains to be seen how much money rich countries, developed countries and the polluting countries will be willing to put into that fund,” says Romain Weikmans, a climate-finance researcher at Université Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels.

Countries calling for the fund, especially those highly vulnerable to climate change, are expecting it to eventually reach at least $100 billion per year. Tom Mitchell, executive director of the International Institute for Environment and Development, an environmental-research think tank in London, says the total amounts so far “are really, really very modest”. Some of the least developed countries see the US commitment as “a slap in the face”, he adds.

Further details, such as how much of the money will be given out as grants versus loans and who will be eligible to receive funding have not been announced. [China, India?]

RTE adds: Questions Remain

There’s still a lot that needs clarifying about this fund. Some of the big outstanding questions include the fund’s size, its relationship to other funds, how it will be administered over the long term, and what its funding priorities will be.

In response to the announcement, leading African think-tank representative Mohamad Adhow noted there were “no hard deadlines, no targets, and countries are not obligated to pay into it, despite the whole point being for rich, high-polluting nations to support vulnerable communities who have suffered from climate impacts”.

Many Issues with Climate “Loss and Damage”

Roger Pielke Jr. explains the other problems with this initiative in a recent talk at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute Climate Change, Disasters, and the Rightful Place of Science  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

“One thing I’d like to make clear is that climate change is real. It’s serious, and it deserves urgent attention to both mitigation and adaptation,” Pielke said. “But I’ve come to see, across my career, that the importance of climate change is held up by many people as a reason for why we can abandon scientific integrity. This talk is about climate and scientific integrity, how we maintain it, and how we use it in decision-making. Reasonable people can disagree about policies and different directions that we want to go, but none of us are going to benefit if we can’t take expertise and bring it to decision-making to ground policymaking in the best available knowledge. Overall, climate science and policy have a narrative problem.”

Hurricanes

In addressing the narrative problem, concerning the first area of public discourse- hurricanes, Pielke displayed a graph of official data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It displayed landfalling hurricanes in the U.S. and showed a long-term trend of no increase in hurricanes overall – despite environmental websites claiming the opposite. Pielke noted the reason for misreporting is the fact that there were no major hurricanes to hit the United States between 2005 to 2017, a pause reflected in the data chart which had a gap there from 2005 to 2017. So if you recently became climate aware in the last 20 years, which many in the media have, you would think that hurricanes were increasing.

“That’s why we do science – because our lived experience is not a good substitute for looking at data and evidence,” Pielke said. “So if you’re paying attention to the news, just this week, it was all over the news that the proportion of hurricanes that have become major hurricanes has increased. Well, not according to the science. So, one of the challenges that I try to emphasize is that there is good information out there.

If the media ignores it and in the political debates it’s ignored,
then it’s all of our responsibility to ferret out what’s real.”

Disasters

In addressing his second subject, disasters, Pielke differentiated disasters from extreme weather defining a disaster as an extreme weather event that intersects with an exposed and vulnerable society.

He quoted from an October 21, 2023 Financial Times article that at a private event last month, one executive at Lloyd’s of London that oversees the market told underwriters that they had not yet seen clear evidence that a warming climate is a major driver in loss claims. Pielke attended the event in person and perceived a concern in the room that anyone making that statement publicly would be called a climate denier, leading to a suppression or minimization of the statement.

Pielke also addressed UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ claim that the number of weather, climate and water-related disasters has increased by a factor of five over the past 50 years. He noted that Guterres used data from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) to make this claim. Pielke referred to notes in CRED reports that have advised for decades “Don’t look at our data and use it to say anything about the weather” and advises their data shows the evolution of registration of natural disaster events over time, which has increased with better means of communication.

As well, since there is more international aid for disaster affected
communities, more communities are reporting.

The number of global weather and climate disasters has declined this century.

On the subject of U.S. disasters, in his sixteen years of affiliation with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Pielke observed a reporting phenomenon – an addiction to reporting billion-dollar weather disasters. The reports are used by advocacy groups, and then the media, who publicize that climate change is causing more billion-dollar weather disasters, something Pielke says isn’t supported by science. He points out that as the United States has gotten wealthier, the actual proportion of that wealth that is damaged in disasters has gone down dramatically.

Misinterpreting Climate Scenarios

Pielke then addressed his third subject, climate scenarios and the effect of misinterpretation.

He referred to the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) – a report by the IPCC that was published in 2000. The 1,184 greenhouse gas emissions scenarios described in the Report have been used to make projections of possible future climate change. Pielke noted that the area of discussion of climate scenarios “is so full of jargon and technical details, that it is almost impenetrable”. Since 1,184 scenarios weren’t easy to study, the community decided to simply to study the four you see represented by the four bold blue lines on the first graph below- namely RCP8.5, RCP 6.0, RCP4.5 and RCP2.6.

(RCP 4.5 is described by the IPCC as a moderate scenario in which emissions peak around 2040 and then decline. RCP 8.5 is the highest baseline emissions scenario in which emissions continue to rise throughout the twenty-first century. Climate change projected under RCP 8.5 will typically be more severe. RCP 2.6 at the bottom is what today we would call the Paris Accord target)

Pielke pointed out that the assumption underlying all the SRES scenarios is that the world is going to turn to coal as the dominant energy source in the 21st century. For this to happen, Pielke calculates that over 3000 new coal plants would have to be built by the year 2100, which he says won’t happen and the IEA expectation is in agreement. However, the Canadian government, the U.S. government, and the Indian government, all rely on the RCP 8.5 scenario and it is pervasive in global climate policy as the IPCC remains focused on it. Pielke points out that all the SRES scenarios have assumptions about GDP, the carbon intensity of energy, and more that are already out of date. Pielke also pointed out that the scientific community has increasingly relied on RCP 8.5 – the most extreme scenario and in 2023, the RCP 8.5 remains the most used scenario in research with many studies published each day using it.

“So why is that?” Pielke said. “The reason is, if you do a study with RCP 8.5 with massive amounts of emissions to 2100, you’re going to get big effects. You can publish that in a prominent journal. Your university will put out a press release on it. You might even get into the New York Times because these very extreme scenarios are notable. Scientists agree there are legitimate reasons for using extreme scenarios in research. Usually, it’s what we call exploratory research, not projective research. Scientists tell me ‘Well if we want to separate the signal of forced climate change from the noise of internal climate variability, we need these strong scenarios’.”

Pielke referred to this attitude as “noble cause corruption”- the idea that
less rigorous science and even bad science is excusable if it advances a cause.

A revision of the scenario projections was initiated in June 2023 and the process of generating the next generation of scenarios has begun and Pielke reports they have removed the top RCP8.5 and RCP 6.0 scenarios. However, he says because we are currently using scenarios developed in the early 2000s, leading media and advocacy narratives which use them extensively are problematic “because a lot of bad science has gotten mixed in with the good science and it’s really hard to tell the difference.”

Background Loss and Damage Post
Climate Loss and Damage Fails Again

UN COP 28 is not a democracy

Voting is not how a UN climate conference operates.

By David Wojick

Reading the breathless Green coverage of the soon-to-be COP 28, the UN conference on climate change (CFACT is on the way!), I noticed a fundamental fallacy occurring endlessly. The analysts seem to assume that decision-making is democratic, such that what you need to pass a rule is a majority vote along the lines of Congress or Parliament.

The reality is extremely different. Every member Country has veto power. This dramatically changes what is possible. The analysts consistently miss this, especially by talking about possibilities that are, in fact, impossible.

A good example is a recent Washington Post article discussing the possibility that COP 28 will adopt a decision calling for the phasing out of not just coal but all fossil fuel use. They correctly report that some countries are all for this while others are strongly against it.

The presently crazy Biden U.S. is for it despite being the world’s biggest per capita user of fossil fuels. Russia is sanely against it as fossil fuel exports are their primary revenue source.

It is then consistently reported as a maybe yes, maybe no situation, like Congress debating a controversial Bill. The obvious reality is that absent a miracle, this measure has no chance whatsoever. It is, as the saying goes, dead on arrival.

An even better example is the ridiculous proposal from France and, again the U.S. that the member countries all agree to, somehow, stop the private financing of coal-fired power plants. Given that China and a number of big developing countries are betting their electrical future on coal this is clearly nothing more than political posturing. Even a miracle could not save this nonsense. But it is dutifully reported and analyzed as a real possibility. At least it is here in America and likely in France, too.

Wishful COP 28 thinking is not news nor analysis, but it fills the pages. The reality is that none of these big-ticket issues that we read so much about have the slightest chance of happening.

The one big issue where something might actually happen is loss and damage. But it will be small, hyped as huge.

Recall that at COP 27, there was reported to be a great advance, creating a Loss and Damage Fund. This is where the developed countries will pay the developing ones something toward their supposedly climate-caused losses and damages: crop losses and food damages, for example.

In reality, all that was created is a name, an idea if you like. A Committee was established to give, or at least propose, form and substance to this nebulous idea. That has not happened because the issues are overwhelming. After all, every county gets bad weather. The U.S. has said it will donate millions of dollars while developing countries are talking trillions.

However, this loss and damage concept is so vague that there is room for moving forward without being so specific or dangerous, that we start getting vetos.

For example, they might agree on where this little fund will be established. This is presently controversial but probably not a deal breaker because the developing countries want to see money moving.

Or they might all agree that the first, small funds go to the Least Developed Countries or maybe to the poorest Small Island States. This is a feel-good first step that makes the fund real. It carefully avoids the issue of who gets how much of them trillions.

This is how COP diplomacy works. Find little steps that everyone is willing to allow while pushing the big issues down the road. Then, report these small steps as big breakthroughs. Of course, there is truly serious green stuff going on, but that is at the national level. COPs are just a carnival.

So, as you watch yet another COP play out, keep in mind that the grand schemes endlessly reported and analyzed at great length are going nowhere fast. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Or as they say in Texas, all hat, no cattle.

Be amused, not angry.

Stay tuned to CFACT for jovial coverage of the COP 28 circus.

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Will China pay climate change “loss and damage”?

The debate over what China owes to countries that are least responsible for global warming — but most harmed by its effects — had dramatically intensified in the wake of the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt. At the end of the two-week summit, known as COP27.

From  CFACT

By David Wojick

I normally despise the bogus issue of “loss and damage,” which is featured in the upcoming COP 28 extravaganza. But for now, I love it because it has squarely raised the long overdue issue of China’s status as a so-called developing country.

The simple issue is, will China pay into the new Loss and Damages Fund? Assuming they ever get it going. It seems obvious they should, and a lot of countries are calling for it, including the US, which might even make it a condition of our participation.

I mean, China is the world’s largest CO2 emitter, right? They produce more electricity than the US, EU, and UK combined, mostly by burning billions of tons of coal a year. What could be simpler?

Well, it turns out to be really complicated, for legal reasons, of all things. COP 28 is the 28th Conference of Parties to the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the grand climate treaty that everyone signed onto.

Core to that massive treaty is a division between developed and developing countries. China was dirt poor in 1992, so of course, they are on the developing list. Today, they are the industrial powerhouse of the world, but the list has not been changed.

The Loss and Damage Fund is also under that treaty, so it is supposed to accept money from developed countries and distribute it to developing ones. Thus, there is no provision for China to pay, a point China happily repeats endlessly. So sorry.

The obvious solution is to change the UN climate treaty to reflect reality, but that would be an almost impossible task, especially since any COP member country can veto any change.

In fact, when you look at the list of big CO2-emitting countries, it quickly becomes apparent that we are not just talking about mighty China. Thanks to their wonderful economic progress in the last 20 years, a good number of those developing countries now emit a lot more than some on the developed list.

China is number 1 in CO2 emissions, but India is 3rd, Iran is 8th, Indonesia is 10th, Brazil is 12th, Mexico 13th, and so it goes. Basing who pays on emissions would open a Pandora’s box of impossible wrangling. After all, Denmark is number 70.

The press coverage is hopeless, as usual. This issue gets almost no attention. More broadly, their whole perspective is wrong as they keep saying the next step is to iron out the details. The opposite is true.

UN negotiations always work from the easy issues to the middle ones and, finally, the really hard ones, which is where we are now. Who pays, how much, and to whom are not details. They are the core, make-or-break issues. The issue getting all the attention, whether the World Bank handles the money or a new UN fund, is tiny in comparison.

Another huge press confusion is repeatedly describing loss and damage as rich countries paying for the climate damage they are causing. The greener version is to call it reparations.

There is nothing about causation or liability in the UN text. It reads like an agreement for the developed countries to send aid to the developing ones for a specific cause, namely climate (actually weather) caused losses and damages. This lack of liability language was a requirement for the US and some other developed countries to agree to kick off trying to set up a fund of some sort. If this fund ever gets set up, which is far from clear at this point, I am sure the US will see its contributions as foreign aid. Certainly not a reparations.

In the meantime, the issue of China paying looks pretty impossible. China has said it does not want any of the aid, but that does not resolve the glaring fact they are by far the world’s biggest CO2 emitter.

It is all looking pretty funny at this point, which is just how I like it.

Stay tuned to CFACT as the COP 28 loss and damage fiasco plays out.

Author

David Wojick

David Wojick, Ph.D. is an inDr. David Wojick is an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to CFACT.

As a civil engineer with a Ph.D. in logic and analytic philosophy of science, he brings a unique perspective to complex policy issues.

His specializes in science and technology intensive issues, especially in energy and environment.

As a cognitive scientist he also does basic research on the structure and dynamics of complex issues and reasoning.

This research informs his policy analyses. He has written hundreds of analytical articles. Many recent examples can be found at https://www.cfact.org/author/dwojick/ Often working as a consultant on understanding complex issues, Dr. Wojick’s numerous clients have included think tanks, trade associations, businesses and government agencies.

Examples range from CFACT to the Chief of Naval Research and the Energy Department’s Office of Science.

He has served on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University and the staff of the Naval Research Laboratory.

He is available for confidential consulting, research and writing.