G7 meeting disappoints on climate action.
The G7 failed to set a firm end date on the use of coal
This evening, I had planned to read a book and then pick up writing again tomorrow. But I kept an eye on the news about the G7. Now that the results came out, I put my book away and sat down behind my laptop to make sure that you got the news. Or better: the lack of it. So here we go:
A reminder of where we are
All G7 countries (and all other countries) are committed to the Paris Agreement, and therefore to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.
The climate ambitions of the leaders of these seven leading advanced economies are vital since they produce about a quarter of all greenhouse gasses.
Leadership during multiple reinforcing global crises requires brave, challenging, and visionary decisions on issues like fighting climate change, the pandemic, halting the loss of nature, and several other challenges mentioned in the UN's Agenda 2030.
The science
Scientists agree that to get on track to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, emissions must drop rapidly to 25 gigatons by 2030. But today's commitments on emissions put us on track to reach more than twice that amount: 56 gigaton CO2 by 2030. To get to 25 gigatons in 2030, we need a 7.6 percent reduction in emissions every year of this decade.
Instead, we go in the opposite direction; the International Energy Agency has warned that this year will see the second-biggest increase in CO2 emissions ever.
In short, to remind of the words often used by Greta Thunberg: 'the house is on fire.' And the G7 is the fire brigade that met this weekend to coordinate action to save the house from burning down.
The result
As so often before, the leaders of the G7 failed to act decisively to save our planet.
If all countries had listened to the scientists and acted upon their recommendation just ten years ago, the governments would have needed to reduce emissions only by 3.3 percent each year instead of the 7.6 percent we are facing now. Every day without decisive action to curb greenhouse gasses increases our annual challenge. We are dangerously close to the point where it is impossible to keep the world from warming above 1.5 Celsius.
Coal
The burning of coal is so polluting that it should be highest on the climate action list, but the G7 failed to set a firm end date on the use of coal. That makes it harder to convince China to do its part, the country that produces more greenhouse gasses than the entire developed world combined.
Some decisions of the G7 would have been impressive positive examples of climate policy some 15 or 20 years ago when the scientists were just as convinced of the urgency for climate action as they are today. Today, the G7 nations promised to end international funding for coal projects by the end of next year, unless these projects include the technology to capture and store the CO2 emissions.
But it is too little and too late. Some 15 or 20 years ago, the G7 would have been far more influential if they had taken the right climate action. Now their emissions are only about a quarter of all emissions, and I guess we could say that their climate action undertaken is at best also a quarter of what it should be at this stage.
COP26
The year 2021 will go down in history as an important one for climate change because of the upcoming COP26 in November and the US being back on board of the Paris Agreement. The failure of the G7 to take more decisive action in the face of these challenges makes a successful COP26 both more critical and more challenging.
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Notes:
https://www.unep.org/interactive/emissions-gap-report/2019/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57018837Photo industry: by Vitaly Vlasov from Pexels
As usual G7 did not live up to expectations on climate change. Seems agreeing on limiting coal burning was a no go. From the US point of view the one good point that did occur was that European leaders knew that we were back to preTrump relations.
As the pandemic wanes it definitely means carbon emissions will also rise. Seems an opportunity was missed by the G7.