Time to stop COP?

The UN’s Climate Change Conferences – commonly known as COP summits – have been running since the mid-1990s, and have been the leading international effort to hold countries accountable for their emissions in the face of the Climate Crisis.

These events have brought together global leaders to discuss the severity of the Climate Emergency we face, sought to establish legally binding obligations on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and have also acted as a lightning rod for media coverage of the Climate Crisis.

While many COP events have been heralded as successes – with the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement being particularly notable – the summits have also been the source of great ridicule due to their continued ties with fossil fuel companies and major greenhouse gas emitters.

In the week when the United Arab Emirates announced that COP28 will be led by the head of one of the world’s largest oil companies, we ask if it is time to move away from COP and instead place the power in the hands of the people.

But quickly COP’s progress began to slow down and delay action. This can be seen clearly between COP13 in 2007, when the Bali Roadmap extended greenhouse gas emissions reductions to all nations – which only came into effect in 2011 at COP17.

We’re now five years on from the signing of the Paris Agreement at COP21, and nowhere near enough progress has been made by any Global North nation to limit global temperatures to 1.5°C.

In fact, none of the world’s biggest nations, including the entire G20, have a climate action plan that meets their obligations under the Paris Agreement according to Climate Action Tracker, with only The Gambia on course to be compatible with limiting global temperatures to 1.5°C.

In fact, Ireland is one of the worst offenders, missing every target that the Government has set so far, and likely to considerably overshoot its legally-binding 51% emission reduction target in 2030.

The lack of meaningful progress was painfully evident at the conclusion of COP26 in 2021 when fossil fuel companies – and the politicians in their pockets – watered down efforts to ban the use of coal, despite the clear consequences for humanity and the living world.

Lies, Lobbying & Hypocrisy

While COP events were designed to bring leaders together to progress policy on emissions, they have also served another purpose: improving the ease and efficiency of lobbying by fossil fuel companies and major emitters by corralling policymakers into one readily corruptible group.

COP24’s first official sponsor was Poland’s biggest coal company – in the end three coal giants and a gas company played a major role in footing the $67 million cost of the conference – and the final agreement was thrashed out in front of a wall made of coal.

More recently COP27 in 2022 was sponsored by Coca-Cola, one of the world’s biggest plastic polluters and a major oil consumer. Given the millions they spend each year to greenwash their brand, sponsoring a climate conference and getting in the ear of delegates to maintain the status-quo is clearly deemed to be good for business.

This is compounded by the tone-deaf attitude that many politicians attending COP take – either uneducated about the reality of the Climate Crisis that we already face, or disinterested in being part of the solution.

This is reflected in the comments of Tasneem Essop, head of the Climate Action Network, who made the following comments in an interview with The Guardian: “He cannot preside over a process that is tasked to address the Climate Crisis with such a conflict of interest. If he does not step down as CEO, it will be tantamount to a full-scale capture of the UN climate talks by a petrostate national oil company and its associated fossil fuel lobbyists.”

Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College compounded this view on Twitter: “COPs have always been circuses. Now they are complete jokes. The COP process has been utterly compromised by fossil fuel involvement. We desperately need something different.”

Something Different

So, it is reasonable to question the validity, efficacy and value of COP, but what we simply cannot dissolve these events with nothing to take their place.

Professor Bill Maguire took to Twitter to suggest replacing COP events with “separate standing bodies focusing on energy, transport, deforestation, loss & damage etc, working all year round. Not this bloated festival of world leader photoshoots and oil execs.”

The year-round aspect is particularly appealing, as COP conferences are always too short (or too full of media opportunities) to reach necessary conclusions on a wide range of topics.

At IrishEVs, we are not expert climate scientists, nor are we expert event organisers or policymakers. But we believe there are some glaring opportunities to either restore faith in COP events, or establish a fairer and more effective approach for future alternatives:

• No conflict of interest – All participants in the event must either relinquish their interests in corporations (financial or otherwise) or not have any in the first place. Only politicians living on their political salary may attend to restore faith in the system and ensure equitable outcomes for all of life on Earth – not for their own pockets or power

• Greater global south representation – The Global South is already paying the price for the Climate Crisis and is substantially more vulnerable to what we face in the near future. All too often their voices are drowned out – in fact, just 11 of the current 27 COP events have taken place in Global South nations – and future events must balance out the political power and financial might of nations in the Global North with greater voting power for those in the South

• Platform science over politics – Groups like Scientist Rebellion exist because the voices of the most educated people on the topic of climate science are being ignored and subjugated – in places like the UK they are even being criminalised. Any future events need to be a platform for scientists to educate the public about the realities of what we face, and how we can all act for the collective good

• Public engagement – COP events have taken place behind closed doors for too long. They are invite-only affairs that make it deliberately hard for the public to attend and engage with. This needs to change, as only through public education can we make the necessary progress that we need to in the face of the Climate Crisis. Those making public policy should be accountable to the public

• Legally-binding outcomes – Previous climate agreements have lacked bite, and it has been all too easy for nations to leave an agreement if they look to be failing them. Hitting nations financially in the short-term is a must if swift progress is to be made, but more can be done to limit the biggest emitting nations and the climate laggards. For example, failure to hit targets in the short-term should exclude participation in votes until they demonstrate they can live by the rules they expect of others

• Short-term repercussions – Too many climate agreements have focused on the decades ahead – albeit with good justification. But there is nothing to preclude shorter-term targets to speed up action and ensure that nations are held accountable for their failures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We simply don’t have time to waste on nations that don’t apply the necessary speed and urgency in tackling the Climate Crisis

COP-out

COP events are supposed to be about leadership in climate action – events where elected officials act in the best interests of their home nations to cut emissions, and in the best interests of all life on Earth to avert the sixth mass extinction that we stand on the precipice of.

Yet these events devolve into anything but – a celebration of self-interest, corruption and greed.

Given the prevalence of lobbying, the flagrant immorality and lack of education about the Climate Crisis amongst leaders attending these events, and the continued sponsorship by major emitters, we need to ask if these events maintain their original goal of giving humanity – and all life on this planet – the best chance of survival.

The UAE’s leadership of COP28, and the appointment of an oil baron as the event’s president, suggest that it is no longer fit for practice.

Instead, it is time to put the power back in the hands of academics, activists and the public – with politicians having to follow our demands, rather than the whims of those with the biggest bank accounts and greatest emissions.

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