I’m embarrassed to admit I’d never heard of the host country of COP 29, Azerbaijan, before I started reading about this year’s Conference of the Parties (Big UN Climate Change Conference). I knew nothing of the Absheron Peninsula and had some reading to do about the host city, Baku. Among other things. And now that we on our 29th annual UN-backed climate change conference, it is becoming clearer and clearer where climate change is headed. And while the prognosis has improved dramatically over the last ten years, things are not looking good. But there are reasons for optimism too.
The first time I saw COP 29 in the news was an article warning that (gasp!) fossil-fuel rich countries were trying to worm their way out of the fossil fuel phaseout agreement from COP 28! And Azerbaijan, a petrostate, was hosting! Cue the lamentations of injustice and howls misery from the usual climate change seagulls who flock on Reddit. I found this about as surprising as the sun coming up in the morning, but it was an ominous lead up to COP 29. Among other ominous news. And much like COP 28, expectations were extremely low, and hit rock bottom by mid-November (gee, I wonder why), while the need for progress was extremely high.
So, COP 29. It is pretty much official that limiting Earth’s warming to the ideal target, 1.5 degrees Celsius, is impossible. Frankly, it was never very likely to happen and it would have required a unified, undisputed global effort with no conflict or setbacks to achieve. And that is simply not how humanity rolls. We disagree and we face setbacks. So, the 1.5 target is gone. It was an excellent goal for strive for. It provided clarity and stakes to the transformative effort needed to preserve our climate and it was a motivating, aspirational target. But it was never all that likely to happen and now it’s impossible.
But just because we haven’t achieved the best-case scenario doesn’t mean that we’ve failed. With the 1.5 degree target out of reach, we now aim for 1.6 degrees. If we miss that, we aim for 1.7. And so on. 2 degrees is the ‘safe limit’ for warming, although that fact needs the massive qualifying statement that 2 degrees is quite bad for life on Earth in general, although it will allow the majority of the human race to survive. It’s effectively a C-/D+ in managing climate change, while 1.5 was an A+. Because things get worse with every fraction of a degree north of 1.5, our ideal target, but we are still far improved from the 4- or 5-degree scenarios we were likely to face a decade ago before so much progress was made.
In good news, the Climate movement is finally getting kind of hot for nuclear energy. And fusion energy. Of all things. Really, anything at all that can generate electricity without creating greenhouse gas emissions. This is a big shift, which is largely the result of a rapidly growing demand for energy. In the digital age, our demand for electricity, cooling, computing power, are all growing rapidly. Faster than most people expected, I think. There now seems to be a broad consensus that it isn’t wise to fill the gap with fossil fuels. So, climate change people are warming up to nuclear; to which I say, okay. Nuclear power is how the majority of the electricity I use gets generated. It is a viable, if extremely expensive, electricity source. Sure, go for it.
But ultimately, COP 29 was meh. There was an agreement to increase funding to poor countries to manage climate change. It was way below what poor countries said they need. They said they needed over a trillion dollars a year, they got 300 billion a year. I can’t comment on the funding gap, I just don’t know enough about global climate finance to hazard a guess on what the gap really means. But I do know the 300 billion a year is up from 100 billion a year, which was the previous agreement. So, an improvement, but not nearly enough. Which is the general status of climate change in general. We are seeing improved efforts to reduce emissions, improved agreements, improved funding, incredible new technology, but these improvements are still not enough. Hence why limiting the planet’s warming to 1.5 degrees slipped away.
And I’d like to get personal, for a moment. I am 33 years old at time of writing. I live in Canada, a climate laggard and ‘petrostate’ (oh, hey. Just like Azerbaijan. Neat.). Being a few years older than COP, I think I can say the following: it takes longer than 29 years to get your act together. It was only when I turned 30 that I got a proper sense of my values, what I wanted from my life and career, what I needed to do to provide for my family, and what I properly considered just or unjust. It took me a lot of time, over a third of what is likely to be my life, to get my head on straight and work towards clear goals under a defined framework. Also, a generation is roughly 30 years. A ‘climate normal’ is roughly 30 years. I think in our digital world where so much is instantaneous, we forget that it takes ten, twenty, or thirty years for the world to change, and for the effects of innovations or cultural shifts to become clear. And we are not quite at thirty years of COP yet. So, to an uninspiring 2024 COP, I say, let’s see what happens next year. Things might shape up.
The climate change seagulls often shriek that climate change is the most urgent problem on Earth and anything less than a radical, war-time mobilization towards decarbonization is a global injustice. But a simple fact of the human race is that change takes time, even in the rapid and frantic world we’ve created for ourselves, we cannot change fundamental facts of our civilization overnight. As awful as it is to be patient in the face of crisis, we need to be.
Also, final a word on conferences. I have been going to conferences as part of my job for two years now, and I’d just like to clarify that Earth-changing agreements and profound reckonings rarely occur at conferences. No, they are largely pretty dull. There is a lot of hawking dubious services and unnecessary software, lots of skipping out on sessions, lavish parties, bickering, snide remarks, and the inspirational speeches and truly excellent speakers with a vision for the future are few and far between. Just so we’re all clear. COP has occasionally produced remarkable results. COP 15 was the Paris Agreement and COP 28 was an explicit call to transition away from fossil fuels. It may be a couple more conferences before we get something really incredible. But I do hope that we get another ass-kicking COP conference soon. Hosted by a country with youthful energy, a real stake in what happens to their climate, and a clear vision. Say, whose hosting next year? Brazil? Hmm…
Alex Colvin 