After the just-concluded COP27 negotiations in Egypt, humanity faces a crisis. The UN -sponsored meetings failed to produce an agreement to reduce carbon emissions that are heating the globe and causing weather disasters all over the world. We can place blame for this failure squarely on the shoulders of oil rich countries, conservative American politicians, and Russia.
The final communique from the event didn’t directly mention fossil fuels, the source of global warming. Pressured by Saudi Arabia, American republicans, and Russia, the group couldn’t agree to limit emissions in any serious way before the next COP meeting. Perhaps it hardly matters because countries don’t tend to follow these meetings with actions to achieve their stated “commitments”.
Everyone alive will face serious problems because of the failure of COP. Even wealthy people in the developed world will face the consequences of a food supply crisis driven by drought in key food growing areas, local heating that causes more fossil fuel consumption to cool inefficient buildings, and the threat of fire and flood and extreme storms.
For the global south, the failure of COP will be much more consequential. In Africa serious drought and spreading desertification is causing famine and killing tens of thousands of animals like elephants who can’t find water. The drought fits global warming models closely. Rising sea levels will drown various island states, creating refugees and cities like Miami will face flooding.
Fundamental to the COP failure are two problems. Greed on the part of oil addicted economies like Russia and Saudi Arabia causes their leaders to actively oppose cuts in fossil fuel use. The New York Times reports that Saudi Arabia actively worked to block fossil fuel use cuts at COP and that country is lobbying inside the United States to urge us to consume more oil and gas. Saudi Arabia sends people to midwestern states to get ethanol producers to oppose climate change action.
Meanwhile Russia (Putin) has never taken climate change seriously and the country has an economy based on oil production and sales. This Putin’s aggression against Ukraine has caused his main oil customers to seek alternatives rather than buy the blood soaked Russian oil. Europeans are restarting coal plants given the crisis Putin created in their energy supply. Though the coal use will be temporary, time is of the essence in climate change.
And in the United States, republicans have almost uniformly adopted the stance mouthed by Donald Trump that climate change isn’t really a problem. Trump comes to this conclusion out of willful ignorance, but his followers adopt it out of expediency and greed. For example, in Colorado we see rural republicans pushing an increase in oil drilling rather than working toward new jobs in clean energy. Boom and bust.
Republicans see climate change as an element of the culture wars since it is scientists and those who believe in collective, government action who champion its solutions. Those people are reliably not republican voters.
Republicans showed up at COP27 to spew nonsense about carbon capture and clean gasoline, neither of which exist. They said that natural gas is an answer, though it is only slightly better than coal in terms of emissions. But their happy-talk is climate denialism-lite. Members of their delegation included: Rep. John Curtis (UT-03), Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC), Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-02), Rep. Tim Walberg (MI-07), Rep. Debbie Lesko (AZ-08). It is hard not to conclude that their basic mission was to undermine the message of the US Government and put our domestic political divisions on display internationally.
One wonders who paid for these republicans to travel half way around the world? Was it an oil industry lobbying group perhaps? Did they waste taxpayer funds on their carbon-spewing adventure? The cost was substantial.
Then there is China, another dictatorship led by an ultra-conservative regime. While China is taking serious steps to adopt green energy, its priority is economic growth, powered by coal fired power plants for the foreseeable future. They keep building coal plants though they promise they will phase out coal in the next decades. Their population is angry about choking air pollution from factories that make plastic junk for Americans and hundreds of coal plants.
What are people to do? The UN climate conference structure is not producing actual results. Scientists see that we cannot achieve the 1.5 degree C warming point, beyond which vicious cycle warming occurs. There is only so much individuals can do. Those with funds can buy electric cars and solar panels but most people can’t afford those and don’t have low carbon alternatives for their lives unless we as a society produce them together. Converting our transportation to electricity is set to take many decades at the current pace.
Ultimately, we are dealing with the reality of atmospheric physics and chemistry. There is no God out there willing to put a hold on the warming process while we struggle with our disagreements, our fantasies, greed, and inertia. Reality marches onward just like the aging and death process than nobody can escape. Time is running out and it appears that global warming is a problem that humanity is incapable of solving.
Tom Ribe
