[music]
President Joe Biden: There’s no more time to hang back or sit on the fence or argue amongst ourselves. This is the challenge of our collective lifetimes, the existential threat to human existence as we know it, and every day we delay, the cost of inaction increases. Let this be the moment that we answer history’s call here in Glasgow.
Melissa: Back on November 1st, President Joe Biden issued this call to action at the COP26 Global Climate Summit. Two weeks later, the summit is at an end and world leaders from close to 200 countries have agreed to a pact meant to address the effects of climate change. The agreement suffers from many of the inequities that characterize the challenges of global climate change. Rich nations continue to contribute much more of the planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, poor countries suffer many more of the life-altering consequences of those changes. The COP26 agreement does little to ensure that wealthier countries provide the foundational resources necessary for poorer nations to cope with the changes that they are already experiencing.
Experts maintain that we must slow global warming so that it does not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above the temperatures recorded in the pre-industrial age, but the COP26 agreement sets a goal of keeping warming at 2 degrees Celsius or below. It's progress but it's probably not aggressive enough to stave off the most devastating effects of the heating planet. This means we can likely expect more frequent and brutal storms in the coming years.
The nations have agreed to reduce fossil fuel use. This is the first time in a global climate pact that fossil fuels have even received mention. The decision to use the language phased down rather than phasing out, that has drawn criticism from activists. After two weeks of conversation and contestation, what will the agreement of COP26 accomplish? This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and we're asking, So What? We're joined now by Dr. Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University and author of The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back our Planet. Dr. Mann, great to have you here.
Dr. Mann: Thank you, Melissa. It's great to be with you.
Melissa: Let's just start with that, So What? question. Do summits like COP26 matter?
Dr. Mann: Well, they do. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is the only multilateral process that we have for addressing the climate crisis, for creating global policy to address the climate crisis so, we can't throw it out, we can't move away from it. We need to embrace that process while making sure that it's working properly, that it's functioning properly. As you know very well summarized in the opening here, we did make some real progress, but we didn't make enough progress.
If you look at where we were say, going into the Paris Summit back in 2016, COP21, we were looking at the better part of 7 degrees Fahrenheit warming of the planet, we were looking at 4 degrees Celsius warming. As you already mentioned, we're now probably looking at less than 2 degrees Celsius warming of the planet, less than 4 degrees Fahrenheit warming of the planet if all the countries make good on their obligations and that's an important caveat. That's real progress.
As you said, for the first time the gorilla in the room is being mentioned here, fossil fuels. There was language. We would have liked to hear that language say phasing out coal because that's what we need to do instead. Ironically, it wasn't one of the G7 countries that weighed in at the very end to water down the language, it was India. That takes us to this point that you made that part of the friction here is the differential responsibilities and interests of the developing world and the industrial world, and that's a problem that we need to solve.
Melissa: I'm so glad that you brought us to that point about India weighing in here. When we think again about that pre-industrial age, we're talking about a time when Western Europe, the United States were able to build, grow economies, grow the health of our populations and do so while massively polluting. Now, as we look at nations that are emerging into that same space, they're in part asking for those same capacities to address the human health and wealth of their nations and economies while not being constrained to polluting standards that are so much stricter than what the US and Western Europe experienced.
Dr. Mann: That's exactly right. I'm coming to you from the state of Pennsylvania where I live. This is the state where we discovered oil in this country. It was built on coal. It's truly a fossil fuel state. We had two centuries of access to cheap, dirty energy to grow our economies and we know that we're now seeing the detrimental impacts of that worldwide. We can't afford for the rest of the world to make the same mistake that we made to build their economies based on dirty fossil fuel energy. We have to help them leapfrog past that stage.
That's why, as you alluded to earlier, it's so critical that the United States and other industrial countries ante up and provide the funds necessary to make it economically advantageous for the developing countries to skip the fossil fuel stage and develop clean energy infrastructure. It'll be better for them, it'll be better for the planet. We've got to make it worth their while economically and thus far, we haven't come up with the promised funds of $100 billion a year which is the estimate of what it would take to make that happen.
While India was technically the one that threw that monkey wrench into the works late in the conference, let's realize that they're probably frustrated and other developing countries are probably frustrated that they're dealing with the brunt of the problem. They're seeing the worst impacts of climate change. They had the least role in creating this problem in the first place and we haven't yet done enough to help them along.
Melissa: Talk to me a bit about the promises versus implementation gap. You've pointed out this is the one for multilateral space to make these agreements. Is there any multilateral capacity to hold nations to these agreements?
Dr. Mann: That's a great question. Unfortunately, the UNFCCC doesn't really provide for any official mechanisms, punitive mechanisms, legal enforcement mechanisms. There's a debate about how you would legally enforce the provisions of these treaties. Thus far, it's really been much more of a name and shame approach which is to say that you become a pariah if you're not living up to your responsibilities.
Here's the thing, individual countries do retain the right to levy tariffs and to impose fees, border adjustments, we sometimes call them, on those countries that aren't doing their part. There are enforcement mechanisms politically and economically that can be used by individual countries, but there isn't really a multilateral framework for that.
Melissa: Talk about China. What is the likelihood of China following through on its commitments and does any of this matter if they don't?
Dr. Mann: Yes, it matters so much what signal we send to the world. It's back in 2016 when Barack Obama was president, we were displaying global leadership on climate. Our secretary of state, John Kerry successfully negotiated a bilateral agreement back in 2015 with China. It was for us to bring our carbon emissions down within a decade and a half and for them to bring their emissions to a peak within roughly that same timeframe before bringing them down. That laid the groundwork for a very successful Paris Agreement.
Here's the thing, China not only lived up to their end of the bargain they exceeded it. They began to decommission coal-fired power plants. What that tells me is that when the United States is serious, when they demonstrate to the world and the Obama administration did, that we're serious about owning up to our responsibilities, other critical actors like China do engage in good faith and they meet their obligations. They are currently the largest carbon polluter in the world but let's not forget we are the largest legacy carbon polluter in the world. We've added more carbon pollution to the atmosphere than any other country.
It's so critical that these two countries be working together and that's probably more than anything else. What makes me cautiously or at least stubbornly optimistic about the result of Glasgow that you now have an agreement between China and the US to work together. Next week, Joe Biden and the Chinese president are going to be meeting virtually again to discuss progress here.
Melissa: COP26 was billed as "the last best hope" to save the planet. I'm wondering do I need to start saving my dollars to go to that space hotel that Jeff Bezos is building or do you think we did enough in this that maybe we can in fact save the planet?
Dr. Mann: As my Princeton colleague who you may know, Michael Oppenheimer weighed in the other day in an AP article, 1.5 degrees Celsius that's on life support. I think that's a fair description. It's not dead. We kept it alive, just barely. The remit of this meeting was to keep 1.5 C alive and we did it by the closest of margins which means that we have a lot more work to be done. The good thing here is we're not going to wait five years as we've been doing in the past to revisit these commitments. The meeting final statement requests, asks, coerces the countries of the world to come back next year and ratchet up those commitments so that we can get onto that path that limits warming below that dangerous 1.5 Celsius-3 degree Fahrenheit.
Melissa: I know the big question of global climate change is in fact at the national and international level but with this last minute, are there things that individuals can be doing that make a difference?
Dr. Mann: Absolutely. Vote of course but use your voice, hold policymakers accountable, make noise, do everything we can to make sure that they act on our behalf rather than on behalf of the polluters.
Melissa: Dr. Michael E. Mann is a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University and author of The New Climate War. Dr. Mann, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Mann: Thank you, Melissa.
[00:12:29] [END OF AUDIO]
Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.
New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.
