Climate action needs more than conference accords
AS AN exercise in cooperative problem-solving, the G20 environment meeting in Bali last week hit the right notes. The delegates agreed to reduce the impact of land degradation and drought; increase protection, conservation and restoration of land and forest ecosystems sustainably; and to uphold the Paris Agreement on climate change. For good measure, Indonesia’s Environment Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar warned the forum of 19 countries and the European Union the world was in a climate crisis situation.
Evidence for her observation is ubiquitous. China is experiencing a record heatwave that has spread across half of the country, even to the normally frigid Tibetan plateau. Temperatures as high as 45 deg C have led many provinces to impose industrial power cuts as cities struggle to cope with a surge in demand for electricity. The mighty Yangtze River is drying up. So is the Rhine, the Danube, the Tiber and the Po, the Elbe and the Volga.
Extreme weather events span not just continents but much of the globe. North America is in the grip of heatwaves. Four of its major river systems are drying up. At the other extreme, one-third of Pakistan is underwater after non-stop rain from mid-June. There are floods along the Nile and the Amazon. The melting of a massive ice sheet in Greenland is set to raise global sea levels by nearly 27 cm by the end of this century.
So the Bali consensus (and other similar conferences) are the easy part. The real challenge is how to get everything done with everyone on board. For instance, all are agreed that the use of fossil fuels causes the global warming that has changed weather patterns. Yet, as things stand, this non-renewable energy source meets the needs of 80 per cent of the world’s requirements. Fossil fuel demand is so great and inelastic that the resource is now fetching record prices because the Ukraine conflict caused disruption to the smooth working of the market.
Europeans - who have never passed up a chance to lecture the rest of the world on the importance of ending dependence on fossil fuels - have shown no hesitation switching to dirty coal to meet their current energy needs. The International Energy Agency notes that coal consumption in Europe is expected to rise by 7 per cent in 2022 on top of last year’s 14 per cent surge. More importantly, the Europeans are now turning to seaborne coal from South Africa, Indonesia, and even as far away as Australia, because they decided to halt imports from Russia. The irony that the countries which have contributed the least to global greenhouse gas emissions, such as Pakistan, suffer the worst of its consequences seems lost on them.
As well, it should be noted that fossil fuels are critical in the manufacture of plastic, steel and a range of other products. So not only will the global economy have to end its dependence on fossil fuels, it has to find another way of manufacturing a slew of goods that are the by-products of fossil fuels.
If there is to be a concerted effort to mitigate climate change, the nations that grew rich on profligate use of fossil fuels in the past must set the example for the rest of the world. Conference accords are just not good enough.
