To: Detroit/Seattle
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November 11, 2021
Re: No relief from hot air at COP26, the UN climate summit
by Joseph Green, Detroit Workers’ Voice
The UN climate conference in Glasgow, COP26, is heading for disaster. Even UN sources say so. This is explained in the 2021 Emissions Gap Report from the UN Environment Program (UNEP), and its recent Addendum which dealt with the results from the first week of COP26. The Washington Post, basing itself on those sources, reports that
“….Earth is on track to warm about 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit), eclipsing the world’s shared climate goal by a full degree.
“In a preliminary analysis released Tuesday [Nov. 9], United Nations researchers found a massive gap between countries’ long-term promises to zero out carbon emissions and the official, short-term plans known as ‘nationally determined contributions,’ or NDCs.
“What countries are planning to do between now and 2030 makes many net zero pledges impossible, the researchers say. And despite a flurry of new commitments to zero out emissions, the projected level of warming by the end of the century is only about 0.1 degrees lower than before COP26 started.” (1)
Different estimates by other sources put the expected warming at anywhere from 2.4 to 2.7 degrees C. Moreover, all these estimates depend on various market measures actually working, which goes against what’s happened in the last few decades. But COP26 is determined to keep trudging along the same path. That’s despite the fact that the UNEP report itself talks about pledges not being fulfilled, measurements of greenhouse emissions being inaccurate, and the continued lack of transparency.
Meanwhile there has been a flood of optimistic, feel-good talk from Biden, his representative John Kerry, Obama, corporations, financiers, and others about what is being accomplished at COP26, at the power of the Global Methane Pledge (which doesn’t include the top three world methane emitters, Russia, India, and China), through new technological processes (many of which are still on the drawing board), and through pledges by global financiers.
The UN Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, with over 450 financial firms on board, boasts that it will put $130 trillion into the service of the climate emergency. However, these groups aren’t going to spend trillions of dollars. The $130 trillion is simply their combined assets, and they don’t intend to risk anything. They are just going to shift around investments, while seeking a continued return on their money. This is the weakest sort of market measure, and it assumes that the large corporations will continue to call the shots. (2) To put it another way, they will seek to control the future economy. The big capitalists and the financial houses pushed the world onto the road to hell, and now they want to be rewarded for how hot it is by making profits off any change that occurs.
We are told about the Global Methane Pledge, and how it will rapidly cut greenhouse emissions. Cutting methane emissions is absolutely essential, but the methane pledge isn’t really global, lacks enforcement, and doesn’t provide any new mechanism for correcting the errors in past measurements of methane. The world will be lucky if the Pledge merely stops the runaway increases of the past few years in methane emissions. But even according to its promoters, the Pledge will only slow down the increase in temperature by 0.3 degrees Celsius — by 2045. (3) This means that unless there are also substantial cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, cuts beyond what is provided for at Glasgow, the temperature will still rise to the point of utter catastrophe.
COP26 is ending up to be business-as-usual, a global greenwashing of the rush to disaster. It’s exactly as Greta Thunberg said, several days after COP26 began — the conference was
“sort of turning into a greenwash campaign, a P.R. campaign … Since we are so far from what actually we need, I think what would be considered a success would be if people realize what a failure this COP is.” (4)
So it’s not surprising that COP26 has been accompanied by large demonstrations, not just in Glasgow but around the world, demanding the slashing of greenhouse emissions. Youth, indigenous peoples, climate activists, small countries faced with being submerged in the ocean, and others are tired of the empty words of the corporations and the officials, and worried about the ongoing deterioration of the environment.
25,000 people marched in Glasgow on Friday, Nov. 25, as part of the
Fridays for the Future student protests. There were repeated appeals
for solidarity among the different oppressed groups. And Greta
Thunberg declared that COP26 was a failure in which the delegates
sought to create loopholes for their own benefit and to
“continue profiting from this destructive system. … This is no longer a climate conference. This is now a global north greenwash festival, a two-week-long celebration of business as usual and ‘blah, blah, blah’.
“The most affected people in the most affected areas still aren’t heard, and the voices of future generations are drowning in their greenwash and empty words and promises.” (5)
Then on Saturday, as the part of the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice, 100,000 people took to the streets of Glasgow at the call of the COP26 Coalition. A Pakistani activist declared:
“Inside that conference of polluters, the climate criminals are hiding behind barbed wire and fences and lines of police. We’re not going to accept their suicide pact.” (6)
Demonstrations also took place around the world, with 10,000 people coming out in London, and another 100 protests taking place elsewhere in the UK. There were actions in Paris, France; Seoul, South Korea; Manila, Philippines; Palu, Indonesia; and elsewhere. Extinction Rebellion activists took to the streets in Belgium and Australia, while in Glasgow 21 scientists were arrested for blocking a bridge where they had chained themselves together.
Many groups with different viewpoints about what had to be done took part in the demonstrations. The state of the militant section of the mass environmental movement is that there is unity over the need for actual progress in eliminating fossils fuels and in refusing to accept the honeyed statements of establishment figures, but not over precisely what should be done to achieve the necessary goals. The protest movement around COP26 is an attempt to force serious action, but it is united on the goals of this action, not the methods to achieve these goals. The bitter statements of Thunberg denouncing the sham actions of world leaders and demanding real change, but not specifying the precise nature of this change, express the overall mood of the present movement. But the time will come when the movement will be faced with itself uniting on some of the key changes that must take place.
The type changes that are needed are being forced by the need to deal with the impending disaster. It is not radical ideas that have led to the growth of the environmental movement, but the depth of the crisis that is radicalizing ideas and leading to demonstrations around the world. It is the failure of market fundamentalism to deal with the climate crisis, indeed its responsibility for accelerating this crisis, that is leading to its eventual demise.
The UN officials recognize some of the problems, but are seeking to hold back the coming wave of change. Some of them dissent a bit from the optimistic greenwashing taking place, and worry publicly about how little is even pledged at conferences like COP26, but they keep trying to repeat the failed solutions of the past anyway. The most realistic parts of the reports from UNEP talk about things like the failed pledges of the past, the lack of transparency in environmental measures, and the failure to even have an accurate measure of sources of emissions. But there is no serious effort to deal with these things, and COP26 ignores even UN reports. There is no talk at COP26 of eliminating self-regulation, in which the world’s major polluting firms report whatever figures they want or hire experts, beholden to them, to issue reports. There is no talk of eliminating the secret tribunals that can fine governments for taking environmental measures. (7) There is nothing serious about providing someplace to go for the tens of millions of climate refugees that can be expected. And there is certainly no intention, not in the slightest, of bringing the mass of working people into supervising what is going on. The plan isn’t to break the power of the powerful energy capitalists and financial groups; indeed, COP26 looks towards relying on the polluters and exploiters to somehow change their spots, except for a shift in investments and making some changes in technology.
These failings of COP26 aren’t the result of mere mistakes or misunderstandings or lack of knowledge by delegates and officials. It’s the result of the fact that the UN represents the dominant capitalist governments, and the influential delegates represent the moneyed interests. The failure of COP26 is the failure of the world bourgeoisie to take even a slight break from money-making in order to ensure world survival. The result is that the climate crisis will lead to social clashes on an immense scale. Only if the exploited and oppressed masses succeed in forcing some major changes will the world avoid being burnt to a crisp.
(1) Sarah Kaplan and Michael Birnbaum, “Despite COP26 pledges, world still on track for dire warming: Without immediate action, ‘net zero’ targets are unlikely to succeed”, November 9, 2021, The Washington Post, The UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2021 is available online, as is the Addendum.
(2) Jill Baker, “Mark Carney’s Ambitious $130 Trillion Glasgow Financial Alliance For Net-Zero”, Forbes, November 8, 2021.
(3) Amelie Bottollier-Depois, “Slashing methane emissions key for keeping Earth cool”, Physic.org, November 3, 2021.
(4) Jenny Gross, “Greta Thunberg Says Climate Talks Are Becoming a ‘Greenwash Campaign’: Ms. Thunberg and other activists also spoke about the critical role that young women have played in pressuring world leaders to take action on climate change”, The New York Times, November 4, 2021.
(5) Louise Boyle, “ ‘A global greenwash festival’: Greta Thunberg slams Cop 26 at 25,000-strong youth protest in Glasgow: She was joined by other notable Fridays For Future activists including Vanessa Nakate of Uganda, and Mitzi Jonelle Tan of the Philippines”, Independent, November 6, 20211.
(6) Sarah Kaplan, Marisa Bellack, Brady Dennis, Kasha Patel and Karla Adam, “At COP26, 100,000 march for climate justice”, The Washington Post, November 6, 2021.
(7) Amy Westervelt and Karen Savage, “Secret Tribunals And Hand-Picked
Arbiters: A Little-known System Undermines Environmental Regulation/Amy
Westervelt interviews Marcos Orellana, United Nations Special
Rapporteur on toxics and human rights”, Drilled News, October 16
2020. <>
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