CAPE TOWN - If brinkmanship and self-interest are the best human beings can offer to effect climate action, albeit tempered with a plethora of pledges and posturing, then Mother Nature always has the last laugh.
What hubris, what arrogance, what insanity, she must be pondering!
Whether humanity is so perverse in thinking that it has a greater capacity to endure disasters through technology devoid of its behaviour and consumption than to prevent them, as some diehards on the loony fringe of climate deniers already do, the reality is that the Glasgow Climate Pact “agreed” on Saturday is yet another example of human attrition.
That negotiations spilt over from the official end of COP26 on Friday may have given the false impression that bureaucrats were going that extra mile in mitigating the devastating effects of future climate change. It was more akin to a Cold War and a post-colonial mindset.
What the likes of India, Australia, China, Russia and the US – the largest emitters by far of greenhouse gases – were actually pushing for was a watered-down agreement pertaining to the use of fossil fuels and coal.
In a single day they unravelled a potentially workable but far from perfect “deal” only to jettison an earlier firm commitment to "phase out" coal and replace it with wishy-washy lip service to "phase down" the use of coal in power generation.
Such are the small margins in COP speak. Never will the use of the right or wrong words impact the daily lives of millions in the world as they are translated into weaker climate action policies or used as a smokescreen for self-defeating inaction.
It brought the genteel Alok Sharma, president of COP26, to tears, stressing that he was "deeply sorry" for how events had unfolded.
Messrs Biden, Xi Jinping, Putin, Modi and Morrison – not exactly candidates for next year’s Nobel Peace Prize – need to examine their conscience for their criminal abdication of responsibility in tackling the defining threat of our age.
That today’s youth are cynical and apathetic about mainstream politics, especially those pertaining to climate action, is no surprise.
It is they, their offspring and grandchildren who will have to deal with the future consequences of inaction and vacillation of today’s leaders.
Who can blame them for being strident and dismissive of their current leaders? Some of their demands may be contrary to the institutional and corporate vagaries of the status quo, whose drivers are essentially the politics of elections, wealth creation, pursuit of unfettered profit and legacy.
Climate mitigation has largely been a policy of aspirations rather than any meaningful transformative actions across the societal and sectoral spectrum.
Respected climate activists and NGOs are even more scathing. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the gatekeeper of the COP process, admits that post-COP26: “We are still knocking on the door of climate catastrophe… it is time to go into emergency mode – or our chance of reaching net zero (emissions) will itself be zero.”
The truth is that climate action is not yet a major vote winner, otherwise democracies all over would have thriving Green Parties in power.
Even the Covid-19 pandemic has conspired by giving government’s convenient cover in resource allocation priorities.
Spare a thought for those whose future existence is threatened by global warming and rising sea levels – small island states such as Maldives, Marshall Islands and Antigua and Barbuda.
"We have 98 months to halve global emissions. The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees is a death sentence for us," laments Shauna Aminath, Maldives environment minister.
The COP exercises have made some progress. But the world cannot afford a step-by-step approach dragged out to suit the narrow politics and economics of major historical and contemporary polluters.
For India's Climate Minister, Bhupender Yadav, to ask how developing countries could promise to phase out coal and fossil fuel subsidies when they "still have to deal with their development agendas and poverty eradication" is as offensive and ill-informed, as it is politically motivated.
The minister should put that question to millions of his hapless compatriots who suffer from the devastation of perennial floods, droughts, air pollution and the like.
How telling that Delhi residents this week are under a self-imposed “house arrest” because of the poor air quality as a result of crop stubble burning in northern India by farmers.
Like viruses, climate change is not a zero-sum game! If we follow the science, the latest IPCC Report on Climate Change 2021 could not be clearer: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.”
To twist a quip by an ex-US president: “It is the lack of consensus and urgency, stupid.”
The moral ambiguity and deficiencies of the COP process could not be better put than by John Kerry, US special climate envoy. He is obfuscated by the policy ambiguities of his boss, President Biden, and the institutional scepticism and pushback by US Congress and Senate, partly beholden to the powerful fossil fuel and coal lobbies.
Kerry notes that some US$2.5 trillion went into subsidising oil, gas and coal over the past six years.
This at a time when the rich nations failed to meet the US$100bn goal of annual finance for poorer nations struggling to adapt to the climate crisis.
“That’s the definition of insanity. We’re allowing to feed the very problem we’re here to try to cure. It doesn’t make sense.”
Another insanity is the much-heralded “agreement” between Biden and Xi Jinping last week to co-operate on climate action.
A day later, the very same President Biden signed legislation that stops companies judged to be a security threat from receiving new telecoms equipment licences.
It means equipment from Huawei, ZTE and three other Chinese companies cannot be used in US telecoms networks. This will not amuse the Chinese strongman.
As for the future, the baton for COP27 is passed on to Egypt, one of Africa’s largest polluters.
Under the Glasgow pact countries have agreed to meet in 2022 to pledge further carbon cuts with the aim of reaching the elusive 1.5ºC goal. Current pledges, if fulfilled, will only limit global warming to about 2.4ºC.
Parker is a writer and economist based in London.
Cape Times