COP28 started with high hopes, but is now bogged down over a word. Will it be a “phase down” of Fossil Foolishness, per the weakening OPEC and Russia, or a “phase out” per the rest of the world? IOW, do we value money or life more? The word doesn’t really matter, first because the two camps are going their separate ways regardless of any COP resolutions, and second because it turns out that OPEC and Russia are rapidly losing their market power.
The high hopes came from early agreements on a Loss and Damage Fund for the countries worst impacted by Global Warming, and an agreement to reduce methane leaks by 30%, enforced by satellite sensing systems. Neither is adequate to the much larger needs, but both signal changes in global attitudes by the public and by those governments that actually respond to public opinion.
The Guardian: $700m pledged to loss and damage fund at Cop28 covers less than 0.2% needed
In a historic move, the loss and damage fund was agreed at the opening plenary of the first day the Cop28 summit in Dubai – a hard-won victory by developing countries that they hoped would signal a commitment by the developed, polluting nations to finally provide financial support for some of the destruction already under way.
Money offered so far falls far short of estimated $400bn in losses developing countries face each year
Baby steps, after decades of just lying there helpless and then tentatively crawling around.
COP28 is making headlines. Here’s why the focus on methane matters
That’s where the Global Methane Pledge comes in, promising a 30 percent cut in humans’ emissions by 2030. The pledge was spearheaded in 2021 by the United States and the European Union, and so far, 150 nations have signed on. Most recently, Turkmenistan, which has sizable methane emissions, joined. So there’s hope: If everyone were to follow suit, it really is possible to cut global methane emissions deeply, bringing us much closer to meeting the Paris Agreement’s goals, Nisbet argues in a Dec. 8 editorial in Science.
Still, many of the world’s biggest methane emitters, including China, India, Russia, Iran and South Africa, have not signed on to the pledge. China’s methane comes in large part from its coal combustion; India’s, from coal as well as waste heaps and biomass fires. And China alone currently releases an estimated 65 million metric tons of methane per year, more than double that of the United States or India, the next two biggest emitters.
We will come back to these topics in future reports, as we see how these initiatives and others progress.
The big deal, as I see it, is that the old OPEC playbook is dead. OPEC tried to goose prices this year by cutting production, and failed dismally.