COP28, a “tragedy for the planet”

DAVID SPRATT AND IAN DUNLOP

Up to 100.000 people - most of whom derive their professional status and income from politics, defense and climate-related businesses - flew to Dubai to attend COP28, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention United Nations on Climate Change. And the result?

An unmitigated disaster. Indigenous peoples, frontline communities and climate justice groups decried the agreement as unfair, unequal and “business as usual”. In the final session, a weak and incoherent compromise resolution between oil-producing countries and smaller states and climate advocates – which did not call for a phase-out of fossil fuels – was accepted without dissent and greeted with a self-satisfied standing ovation, even as delegates from the Pacific and small islands were barred from the room for security reasons.

Too many simplistic responses were variations on the mix of “we are moving in the right direction, but more needs to be done” and the classic “flawed but transformative” example. Two days later, the COP28 president, who also heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, announced that the UAE would maintain its record investment in new oil production.

Professor Kevin Anderson of the University of Manchester described the scene as “an infinite loop of Groundhog Days”. It seemed as if Stockholm syndrome had taken hold again as delegates, held hostage for decades by the denial and delaying tactics of fossil fuel producers and the threat of vetoes from their governments, cheered an outcome that would bring societies around the world closer to civilisational collapse.

This cognitive dissonance is the cultural norm of COPs. Everything revolves around a performative outcome, regardless of its effectiveness. Despite dozens of such “successes” over three decades, global emissions continue to rise. Politics is based on incrementalism, compromises, agreements, and “pragmatic realism,” which assumes that one can negotiate with the laws of nature and appease an existential risk by doing so. Avoiding climate risk, the supposed raison d’être of COPs, is neither discussed nor understood by the main negotiators.

Many people with a career in climate policy will celebrate any outcome, because to do otherwise would be to admit the systemic failure of the COPs, and risk their own professional future.

But many “outside the tent” in Dubai – the scientists, the more vulnerable states, the young activists and the civil society organisations with some guts – did not celebrate; they mourned for the future of humanity. Kevin Anderson summed it up thus: “There will no doubt be a lot of cheering and back-slapping… but physics won’t care.”

There were two major issues on the agenda: zero emissions, mainly from fossil fuels, and financing. On the former, national delegates agreed on a “transition away from fossil fuels,” but there was no word on the “phase-out” of oil, coal and gas advocated by civil society and 130 of the 198 participating countries.

Still, there were plenty of get-out-of-jail-free cards. The most important was the acceleration of carbon capture and storage, which the fossil fuel industry claims will allow oil, gas and coal to be produced indefinitely, except that the technology doesn’t work at scale. Then there is the acceptance of “efficient” fossil fuel subsidies, and the language around the need for an “orderly” transition that is now impossible largely as a result of the fossil fuel industry’s denialism over many decades.

Climate finance is essential, especially for developing and more vulnerable nations, through the Green Climate Fund, and a Loss and Damage fund that recognises the historical responsibility of highly polluting nations for damage inflicted on those who have contributed least to the problem, but who have disproportionately borne the impacts. Small island states called national commitments to these funds to date trivial and disappointing, and Australia’s refusal to support a Loss and Damage funding mechanism a “profound betrayal and abdication of its responsibilities to its Pacific neighbours”.

Scientists expressed their anger and condemnation. They know that, after COP 28, both the level of greenhouse gases and coal use will reach a record level in 2023. And they have documented the growing emissions and production gap between the promises and actions of nations and the plans of the largest producers of fossil fuels to continue expanding production, which the COP has done practically nothing to prevent.

Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania said: “The lack of agreement to phase out fossil fuels was devastating.” Mike Berners-Lee of Lancaster University called COP28 “a dream outcome for the fossil fuel industry, because it looks like progress, but it isn’t.” Martin Siegert of the University of Exeter said that failure to make a clear statement to stop burning fossil fuels “is a tragedy for the planet and our future.” The world is warming faster and more strongly than the COP response to address it.” And Dr Friederike Otto of Imperial College London: “With every vague verb, every empty promise in the final text, millions more people will enter the front line of climate change and many will die.”

Scientists and policymakers seem to live in parallel worlds, and in a sense they do. The COPs, which claim to be informed by IPCC reports, rely disproportionately on emissions reduction scenarios generated by Integrated Assessment Models (IEMs), which incorporate energy, economics and a reluctant analysis of climate impacts. The MEIs reflect more the social, technological and economic visions of the modellers than the physical realities. They have now been convincingly debunked in recent reports and analyses.

Such models produce absurd proposals about the compatibility of “net zero 2050” with the Paris goal of limiting warming to 1,5-2°C, which have become the bread and butter of COPs. In fact, this year will be close to 1,5°C (with 1,46°C of warming by the end of November), and next year is very likely to be warmer. James Hansen, former NASA climate chief, warns that “global warming of 2030°C will be achieved by the late 2s” due to accelerating warming:

“The first six months of the current El Niño are 0,39°C warmer than the same six months of the 2015–16 El Niño, a global warming rate of 0,49°C/decade, consistent with the expectation of a large acceleration of global warming. We expect the 12-month average temperature in May 2024 to remove any doubt about accelerating global warming. The subsequent 12-month temperature decline below 1,5°C will likely be limited, confirming that the 1,5°C limit has already been breached.”

This should have been the main concern of the COP28 results, but it was never mentioned. Nor was there any mention of the increasingly dire warnings that major turning points are already underway. Faster than anticipated, climate impacts are triggering a cascade of tipping points in the Earth system. And it turned a blind eye to warnings from Stockholm University's David Armstrong McKay and his colleagues that even 1°C global warming could trigger some tipping points.

Privately, some eminent scientists fear we are heading for a truly existential 4°C of warming, given the high-level risks that are emerging. “Could anthropogenic climate change lead to the collapse of global society or even the extinction of humanity? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic… yet there is every reason to suspect that climate change could lead to global catastrophe,” wrote eminent Australian scientist Will Steffen and his colleagues in August 2022.

Nothing at this COP has substantially moved us away from that trajectory. In fact, by fostering the illusion that “orderly” solutions remain possible, in the face of the need for disruptive mobilization on an emergency scale, it has made things worse.

David Spratt He is a research coordinator at Australia's National Climate Restoration Center and co-founder of the Climate Action Centre.

Ian Dunlop He was an industrial executive and director of the Australian Coal Association. He currently chairs the Advisory Council of the National Climate Restoration Center and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group.

This article is published in collaboration with the Australian portal Pearls and Irritations.