The world’s leaders are not coming to save us. That was the message in brilliant technicolor from the 28th COP meeting that concluded in Dubai about a fortnight ago.
Yes, COP28 was a catastrophic failure, but that failure is not down to the individual frailties of the negotiators present. It was preordained. COP can’t work while the global balance of forces remain as they are.
With no mechanism to force the rich countries of the North to pay to support the South to both adapt to climate change and for the loss and damage they suffer from climate breakdown, targets for finance and technology transfers will never be met. That’s why the global commitment to raise $100 billion per year for climate finance is pushed back every year and the much touted Loss and Damage fund, which is projected to need over $200 billion per year by 2030, has amassed only $700 million in commitments – not even hard cash. The US pledged just $17 million to the fund. Compare that with the $14 billion of weaponry for Israel to pursue its campaign of murder and destruction in Gaza.
$100 billion dollars sounds like a lot of money – and it would be for Southern states adapting to the worst impacts of climate breakdown – but it is just around one tenth of one percent of global economic output. But COP’s biggest structural flaw isn’t even the stingy hypocrisy of the Global North. It’s the overweening power of Big Oil in the global system.
This dominance was on full display in Dubai, giving satire its second death after Henry Kissinger’s Nobel Prize. The conference was presided over by the CEO of an oil company and was lousy with fossil fuel lobbyists, whose number quadrupled to 2,400, making them the largest delegation by far.
So it should come as no shock that COP28, like all previous COPs before it failed to agree on the need to phase out fossil fuels and to set a deadline for doing so. Instead, the final document suggests that states may – with no obligations – “draw down” fossil fuel production. The demands from over 120 countries to completely eliminate new fossil fuel production were ignored.
Climate breakdown cannot be averted without addressing the first order issue: fossil fuels power our global system. That has to change. Increasing investment in cleaner energy sources alone won’t do the job. COP28 agreed on tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, but, as we’ve seen with the policies of Joe Biden, President of the world’s biggest oil producer, expanding clean energy investment is compatible with expanding fossil fuel investment.
Investment in fossil fuels continues to soar because it is profitable and we live under capitalism. As we have seen in the past two years, rising prices have meant bumper profits and therefore increased investment in fossil fuels. While rising interest rates puts downward pressure on renewables investment, which is much more capital intensive at the front end.
The world system as it is won’t save us, but rather condemns us to live on a planet that becomes less and less hospitable to human life as we know it. 2023 has been a year of catastrophic extreme weather, from monster heatwaves in Europe to a flooding emergency in Libya and a continental inferno in Canada. January to October was 1.43 degrees above pre-industrial average. Next year will be worse, breaking new records as El Niño accelerates global heating to above 1.5°C, a threshold that risks setting off a cascade of irreversible tipping points.
Next year’s COP 29 will be held in another oil-producing state with no interest in ending fossil fuels, Azerbaijan. This is the dilemma: humanity is trapped in an overheating train helmed by fossil capitalists structurally obliged to fan the flames. Our task is to unite and organise the social forces that can seize the engine room and pull the emergency brake. No more cop-outs.
