I’m not denigrating these massive conferences, because
that’s the only way to bring all the world’s governments together and put them
under intense pressure to up their game on global heating. In fact, it’s the
only place that big commitments on cutting global greenhouse gas emissions ever
get made. So last year they doubled down on the summits.
They went from big conferences every five years – but only ‘expert’ meetings in
between – to big summits where the political decision-makers are present every
year. Physically present, not just following the talks sporadically on
websites, because human beings are animals, and only physical presence creates
real social pressure.
If all the presidents and prime ministers have to show up every year and
demonstrate to their fellow leaders that they are pulling their weight, the
thinking goes, then that should ratchet up the commitments they make at these
now annual meetings.
This new system may really produce better results in the end, but the
short-term effect was bound to make this year’s summit feel like a
disappointment. Last year’s conference could showcase all the new commitments
that had been extracted from governments over the previous five years. This
year’s conference has only the result of one year’s efforts to show.
But the pundits who will use the probably unimpressive results of the Cairo
summit as evidence that the new system has failed are passing judgement too soon. Over the long run the new
approach is likely to produce better results.
On the other hand, these massive global meetings, with well over a hundred
governments in attendance together with many NGOs, fossil fuel lobbyists in
thin disguise, and various odds and sods, move very slowly and require huge
compromises.
The final statement of last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, for example, was the first
ever to mention the word ‘coal’ in the final statement. Coal is the biggest
single human source of carbon dioxide emissions by far, but various lobbyists
and coal-rich countries had managed to exclude even the word from the previous
twenty-five final communiqués.
So we are a very long way from the Promised Land, and the best news this year
has to offer on the climate front is that the Amazon, which may have been on
the brink of irreversible collapse, has got a reprieve.
The past four years, with Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil, have seen
unprecedented levels of illegal mining operations and of land being cleared for
cattle-raising by burning the rainforest.
The rate of deforestation fell from a peak of 28,000 sq. km. a year (about the
size of Belgium) when Lula took office in 2003 to only one-fifth as much by
2014. However, it was already rising again when Bolsonaro came to power
in 2019 and is now at a record high. There is reason to fear that the Amazon
might actually flip from rainforest to savannah.
That wouldn’t just harm people in the Amazon; it’s a global concern. The Amazon
is one of the key ecosystems that regulate the global climate, and changing it
drastically could weaken the West African monsoon, strengthen hurricanes, even
accelerate the melting of the world’s ice. The knee-bone is indeed connected to
the thigh-bone.
There has long been a scientific debate about whether the Amazon is doomed
anyway, no matter what people do or don’t do. A decade or so ago most
scientists believed that just the general heating of the planet, with or
without illegal logging, mining and land-clearance, would dry the region out
and change it to a savannah by the 2040s.
However, further research has reversed that conclusion. The latest Earth system
models show little sign of dieback except where there is direct human
deforestation. Elsewhere, the phenomenon of ‘CO2 fertilisation’ provides a
positive impulse to tree growth that outweighs the negative effect of higher
temperature.
In other words, the Amazon can survive unless human intervention overwhelms it.
Four more years of Bolsonaro could have been enough to tip the scales
irrevocably, but Lula has pledged to stop the destruction of the Amazon. His
past record in office suggests that he can and will do it.
By a margin of less than 2% of the vote, Brazilians have voted to save the
Amazon. Another close call, another calamity postponed (but not yet cancelled).
Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Its obvious the writer doesnt know much about Brazil, and the fact he seems a ardent supporter of a well known convicted, imprisoned massively corrupt politician reduces his arguments to communist blather.
By Nick from Lisbon on 23 Nov 2022, 06:26