Countdown to COP26...what does it all mean?
Environmental activists get their message out on the outside of the Home Office building in London. Photo credit: Getty
COP26, the biggest international climate event in years, is just days away. This year’s climate summit offers a unique opportunity to set a clear path toward avoiding climate catastrophe and securing strong climate action.
First things first…What does COP26 actually stand for?
COP refers to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (‘UNFCCC’), which is the peak decision-making body for the world’s climate change commitments.
The ‘26’ signifies that this is the 26th Conference of the Parties. They usually happen annually, though COP26 was delayed by a year due to COVID19.
Basically, COP26 will be a 2 week-long series of conferences, talks and discussions between global leaders to discuss their climate commitments and work out ways for coordinating efforts to combat climate change going forward.
(Climate Council, 2021)
Why should I care about COP26?
At a time when climate commitments make waves in the news and in conversations, it's important to understand why cutting emissions this decade matters and why we need our global leaders to make immediate policy changes - Glasgow may be the last opportunity to commit to a credible global climate plan before it's too late.
It’s widely recognised that there are three priorities in the race to avert a climate disaster or at least temper the climate change to come:
1. Reducing emissions and finding ways to capture carbon
This is not happening quickly enough! While there has been a quick uptake of renewables technology in recent years this is mainly making up for growth in energy use and not actually reducing fossil fuel energy.
Emissions are still going in the wrong direction with the world continuing to heat up. There will be more warming in decades to come...how do we adapt to the consequences of that warming? Like the West Altantic ice sheet melting, rising sea levels, coral reefs dying, the Amazon rainforest dying and some areas on the planet effectively too hot to actually live outside...so, basically unliveable.
Of equal importance is removing carbon in extreme amounts from the atmosphere via direct air capture and planting millions and millions of trees.
As well as incentivising behaviour change to reduce our carbon footprint.
(Interesting side note: the term carbon footprint was introduced by the oil industry as a way to make people feel individually responsible rather than to push for system change which is what the world actually needed.)
2. Adapting to climate change
Adapting relies on meaningful policy change at all levels, so that we can be looking ahead and understanding what impacts we need to be prepared for; and
Infrastructure planning to make way for sustainable cities that can adapt electricity grids to warmer temperatures and include building sea walls in their planning;
As well as, adapting food and agriculture systems and not wasting our precious water resource.
There are, of course, limits to adaptation: as we can see, the world now is not so well adapted to its current climate.
3. Navigating the global politics at play to reach a unified agreement at COP26
We can’t address the global climate challenge unless you have global climate summits such as COP26. But can it work? Over 200 governments will try to agree on a consensus which in itself is almost impossible but what COP26 will achieve, hopefully, is to put pressure on governments to do something. And by something, we mean Big, Meaningful, Changes.
COP26 is a milestone but not the end of the game, we need more countries to submit bigger commitments and more ambitious plans; such as China announcing it would stop financing new coal fired power plants outside its borders, which is a big step in the right direction as China is the world's largest funder of coal.
Climate plans also have to commit to providing meaningful evidence to demonstrate that countries are acting on these plans and that any plans are having the desired effect, within or even faster than anticipated.
Climate Change is a problem that needs to be solved at a global level. However, getting every country on board and pulling in the same direction is challenging. (Just look at the difference of opinions in Australia...)
What’s it going to take for Australia to get it right?
According to the Climate Council, in Australia we currently have:
No national energy policy
No credible climate policy
A flimsy net zero target (only actually announced a few days ago)
No electric vehicle policy, and
The same emissions reduction target since 2015!
Even though the Federal Government just announced a net zero target by 2050 for Australia it still places our country among the stragglers in comparable nations. As there are no actual plans in place to significantly reduce Australia’s emissions, which means we continue to fuel climate change and miss out on the economic opportunities of the global energy transition. A net zero target is also incompatible with the funding of new coal and gas infrastructure projects which we know are still in place.
Thankfully, State and Territory action is in fact putting the pressure on the Federal Government with their own emission reduction plans.
So what can Australia do?
Accelerate progress in line with the science which tells us that climate change is accelerating - make bold, ambitious and innovative steps to cut emissions!
Showcase the benefits of a global clean economy to Australians - create a renewable energy industry, create 1000’s of jobs and transition existing energy jobs!
Actually move away from any new coal and gas projects that will dangerously pollute the country AND are unnecessary for the green energy transition.
And just for you…
Here’s a couple of resouces you might find useful for background information, as COP26 progresses over the next couple of weeks…
This COP26 explainer from the Climate Council
Webinars and research from the public policy think tank, The Australia Institute
PLUS
This upcoming webinar from the Grattan Institute on 5 November - “COP26 - Mapping Australia's Path to Clean Energy. ” You can register here.
AND
Check out this article from the ABC “Fossil fuel production to soar in face of emissions pledges, United Nations report says.”
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