Hello and welcome to Just Have Another Think - our monthly look at the ecological environmental and
social consequences of our 21st century climate emergency. I'm posting this video on Wednesday
the 27th of October 2021, and as I suspect you already know, in just four days from now one of
the most pivotal climate events of our lifetime - a conference called COP 26 - is due to take place
in Glasgow in Scotland. And our esteemed leaders will certainly have plenty to talk about when they
finally all get together in person, not least of which will be how to drastically improve on the
woefully inadequate decarbonisation commitments known as nationally determined contributions or
NDCs that they or their predecessors made as part of the apparently historic Paris agreement in
2015. What we needed from that COP 21 meeting was a set of binding pledges from each of the
196 participating nations that would limit average global atmospheric warming to well below 2 degrees
Celsius above pre-industrial levels and ideally keep it below 1.5 degrees Celsius. And that's
because if the average temperature in our planet's lower atmosphere goes past 2 degrees Celsius above
pre-industrial levels then all the wildfires, droughts, floods, food shortages, fuel crises,
refugee migrations, and regional conflicts that we've seen in the last few years will look like a
walk in the park compared to what our civilization will experience at those elevated temperatures.
They knew all that at COP21 of course, but back then even though it was only six years ago,
nature hadn't quite yet begun to demonstrate the ferocity of its reaction to human induced
atmospheric warming frequently enough to make the general public and the politicians get a
real visceral feeling for the urgency of the situation. As a result of that abject
policy failure the average global atmospheric temperature now stands at 1.2 degrees Celsius
above pre-industrial levels and unless you live in a cave or you're an as yet undiscovered stairway
on the international space station it's impossible to ignore the almost daily onslaught of news
about an extreme weather event breaking a record somewhere on the planet. 1.2 degrees of warming
means there's already about eight percent more moisture in the atmosphere and that
moisture doesn't spread itself smoothly across the entire face of the planet, it clumps together
in different geographical locations as our weather systems move around. That's why we're hearing more
and more headlines with phrases like "a month's worth of rain in 24 hours causes record flooding".
And in the same way, the temperature doesn't spread itself evenly out either.
Two degrees of average global atmospheric warming can translate into more like seven
degrees Celsius in inland areas. That means that what we regard as extreme record temperatures
today causing multiple fatalities wherever they occur will become commonplace in years to come.
And because the Arctic region is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet
atmospheric systems like the jet stream and polar vortex are being severely disrupted
bringing massive arctic blasts further south and great dollops of warm tropical air further north.
So we're seeing extreme cold winters in places like North America
followed by unrelenting rains and floods in the springtime and extreme heat waves during
the summer - a combination of climatic events that is already starting to severely impact our
global food production systems. I could go on but you get the idea! Anyway in light of
this overwhelming evidence of just how deeply into the brown stuff we appear to have sunk
it's arguably no exaggeration to suggest that COP 26 in Glasgow represents the last
real chance for our leaders to actually show some leadership and put in place measures that will
drag us out of our self-inflicted catastrophe as quickly as humanly possible. Ahead of that event
many countries have already put their increased commitment on the table
and sadly one or two have stated that they won't be altering their original contributions at all.
The chart of trajectory for global greenhouse gas emissions currently looks like this here's where
we'd got to by 2015 and here's where we would have got to by 2050 if we'd changed nothing at all.
Then the Paris agreement happened and all countries submitted those NDCs I
mentioned earlier. Those commitments actually got nowhere near keeping us below 1.5 degrees Celsius
in fact they put us on a path towards about three degrees Celsius of warming, which really
would make it impossible to run our economies and societies in the way we do today. But we took very
little notice of those commitments anyway. Instead of plunging the curve dramatically downwards,
nothing really happened until COVID hit us in 2020. For a year or so we all got giddy with
hope that the seven percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions marked a point of enlightenment for
the human race. But 2021 brought an inevitable bounce back and we're now firmly back on course
for future catastrophe. So surely these new commitments that have been made ahead
of the COP 26 meeting will take up the slack and send that graph line plummeting by 2050.
Yeah, nah! We've still got an emissions gap down here that's almost as big as the Paris
and Glasgow commitments combined. No less than 60 percent short of the 2050 net zero target.
So challenge number one for our world leaders at COP26 is to get real, find some backbone,
and deliver a set of policies that can bridge that gap. According to the IEA that means an
extra four trillion dollars of investment just in the next decade alone. And it is an investment not
a penalty because the return on that investment in terms of jobs prosperity and the avoidance
of catastrophic insurance and repair costs, not to mention collapsing economies, loss of livelihoods,
and loss of life, far outweighs the upfront capital outlay. The Executive Director of the IEA,
Fatih Birol, has called for the leaders of the wealthier nations attending COP26 to unlock
the flow of money into emerging economies to ensure they develop with renewable technologies
instead of fossil fuels. In 2009 developed countries committed that by 2020 they would
jointly mobilize a hundred billion dollars in climate finance every year to support developing
nations in reducing emissions and adapting to climate change. "The United States is prepared
to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing 100 billion dollars a year
by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries" But the OECD recently
estimated that developed countries only managed about $80 billion in 2019 and it looked like they
missed the target again in 2020. According to new research by the World Resources Institute
most developed countries are not contributing their fair share toward meeting the $100 billion
goal, with seven nations stumping up less than half of what they should be giving
based on objective indicators like the size of their economies and their greenhouse gas
emissions. One of the biggest problems here is the non-standardization of the criteria and parameters
for what constitutes climate finance. For example Japan counts money for what they call
'more efficient coal power plants' as legitimate climate finance - which is not really getting into
the spirit of the thing is it? Some countries provide full grants while others like France,
Germany and Japan again, only offer loans which will have to be repaid.
If every developed nation gave the same amount relative to the size of its economy
then the contribution from each country would only need to be 0.22% of GNI. Only France, Germany,
Japan and Luxembourg reached this level between 2016 and 2018. And if private finance stumped up
about $20 billion of the $100 billion then the public contribution would only need to be 0.18%
of GNI. The US was the lowest contributor of any developed nations managing only 0.03% of each GNI.
President Biden's recent pledge to increase US climate finance can help close that gap somewhat
but it's unlikely to fully meet the country's fair share of the effort towards the $100 billion goal.
So here's three concrete measures for COP 26 financing pledges as recommended by the World
Resources Institute : First and most obviously, the majority of developed nations must increase
their climate finance dollars so that they're contributing their fair share of the effort.
Secondly, all countries need to improve the quality of the climate finance they provide
and that means focusing as much cash on adaptation as mitigation. The UN and the Paris agreement
state that it should be a 50:50 split, but at the moment it's more like 75% mitigation and only 25%
percent adaptation, and if we don't help those countries to rapidly adapt to the climate impacts
that are already baked into our atmosphere then they'll be spending more time and money
on repairing infrastructure and relocating people, all of which will reduce their ability to invest
in renewable technologies. Thirdly and crucially there needs to be a massive improvement in data
reporting. There's an old business cliché that says "what gets measured gets done"
and never was that statement more apposite than in the murky business of climate finance.
The WRI report suggests that rectifying reporting ambiguities will increase accountability
transparency and trust. COP 26 is an opportunity to agree a standard set of measuring formats
that developed countries must use to report on financial support under the Paris agreement's
enhanced transparency framework from 2024 onwards. If they can nail that down then it will close the
gaps and loopholes and improve individual countries reporting. And if our wise and
wonderful leaders could push themselves to achieve just one more thing in Glasgow this November,
then according to a group of global investment companies currently responsible for managing
six trillion dollars of assets, that one thing must be to embed an internationally agreed global
carbon price. It might seem counterintuitive for those financial hot shots to be calling for what
is effectively an extra tax but the reality is that those folks make it their business to get
access to the most far-reaching and accurate projections of future global trends available
and those projections tell them very clearly that if we carry on the way we are
then they stand a good chance of losing a very substantial percentage of their portfolios.
And nothing motivates a money manager more than the prospect of losing all their money!
The group is called The Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance. It's got 43 members including some
of the world's biggest pension schemes and insurers. At the moment there are
64 different carbon pricing instruments in use around the world. According to the World Bank
those mechanisms only cover 21 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and even within those
schemes there's a wild variation in pricing structures. That makes it extremely difficult for
those big global investors and companies to manage risk and plan over the long term, particularly in
the development and adoption of new technologies needed to accelerate the low carbon transition. So
the Net Zero Asset Owners Alliance are proposing a sort of hybrid model between emissions trading
schemes and taxes or levies. Specifically they're advocating for a minimum global price on carbon
which would increase year by year in a predictable way. That would give certainty to investors and
provide a guard rail against price crashes and a maximum price to protect against price spikes.
And we're not talking about some penny-annie token gesture like $10 or $20 dollars a tonne here,
as has been suggested by some organizations in the fossil fuel industry. According to the OECD if
we're to stand any chance of reaching net zero by 2050 then the carbon price will need to hit $147
a ton by 2030. That's almost three times the rate of $59 currently used by the EU emissions trading
system. In the words of the chair of the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance, Gunter Tallinger,
"non-regressive and revenue neutral carbon pricing instruments harmonized across borders
will not only unleash massive investments in renewable power systems globally
but boost sectors from construction to transport which are in urgent need of transition".
So there we are then folks, a little bit of extra food for thought as we enter COP 26. Let's see
just how brave our politicians really are eh? Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time