The stones in the way of the COP26 conference, which closed on Saturday in Glasgow, were too many and too heavy to expect anything more than a minimum agreement, after long and complex negotiations between some of the biggest polluters, between the developed North and the so-called developing global South, against the backdrop of the mobilizing the fossil fuel lobi and the demands on the streets of environmental organizations. The Glasgow agreement may be insufficient, given the expectations created and the scale of the climate emergency, but it may be the only one possible given the risk of adjourning the session without any resolution.
It would be a true simplification of what happened during the last two weeks to ignore the weight of the interests at stake and the necessary changes in the short and medium term when interpreting what the conference has given itself. If it has not been possible to establish a program to reduce the consumption of gas and oil, it is because Saudi Arabia, hegemonic power within OPEC, and the other countries whose economies depend on energy monoculture they see their prosperity in danger, even diversifying your investments at full throttle in the global economy. If the commitment to decarbonize energy has not materialized, it is because China has thrown in the rest to protect coal mining, so important in its GDP and in the employment of manpower, and after the Asian superpower several states have followed, including some Europeans, for which the coal sector continues to be essential.
It would also be incomplete to draw conclusions from the Glasgow outcome without paying attention to the merely generic mention of looking in the future for systems to finance, in countries with fewer resources or more vulnerable, a substantial part of the change in the production and consumption model. In the absence of a reasonably accurate picture of the relationship between the cost of curbing the damage caused to the environment and the foreseeable benefit of remediating it, the commitment of potential taxpayers in a position to remedy the situation is unlikely to advance. Which is as much as saying the United States, the European Union, China and a small group of countries with the resources to face the challenge.
It’s harder to assimilate the little influence of the diagnosis that scientists have given to the international community –The IPCC report–, which sets the increase in the average temperature of the Earth at 1.5 degrees to limit the amount of damage. Beyond the obligatory academic respect for experts with proven solvency, the states in the best position have chosen to go through shortcuts that, finally, lack the necessary effective resolution. It is interesting that the final agreement exhorts governments to revise their emission reductions upwards, but the appeal lacks executive force; The pact to regulate once and for all the exchange of gas emissions between States, known as the carbon market, is noteworthy, but it cannot be forgotten that the matter is still pending since the 2015 Paris Agreement. greater specificity of the calendars and further specification of objectives to clear a future full of unknowns.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com