By Emily E. Mariano, JHBL Staff Member
From October 31st to November 13th, 2021, the COP26 occurred in Glasgow with over 200 nations participating.[1]
For almost three decades, the United Nations (“UN”) has been holding an annual convention for the purpose of achieving international cooperation in fighting climate change.[2] Climate change is a growing problem, with numerous adverse effects on the environment such as shrinking ice caps, rising sea levels, more acidic oceans, and more frequent and severe weather.[3] The Conference of the Parties (“COP”) is the dominating decision making body of the Convention.[4] Among their duties, the COP reviews national communications and emission inventories and assesses the measures and progress made in the fight against climate change.[5] Previous COP’s have been influential in fighting against climate change. For instance, at the COP3 in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol and the commitment to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in industrialized countries was adopted.[6] Moreover, during COP21 in 2015, almost 200 countries signed the Paris Agreement, which committed them to the goal of limiting global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius.[7]
Despite the influential changes achieved over the years, no previous COP agreements had mentioned fossil fuels, which is strange given that fossil fuels are the main contributor to climate change as 89% of global carbon emissions come from fossil fuels.[8] Even in the Paris Agreement, fossil fuels were not singled out, rather the agreement included the general commitment towards decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Washington Post, “When the Paris agreement was agreed to, there was absolutely a high level of awareness that fossil fuels are a main driver of climate change and, specifically, that subsidies that encourage extraction, production and consumption are making it harder to avoid the worst outcomes,’ said Daniel Bresette, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. But the delegates also understood the need for ‘a text that everyone could agree on.”[9]
As Daniel Bresette points out, developing countries financially depend on fossil fuels. For instance, one of the developing countries pushing back against a fossil fuel provision is China, which is the largest coal producer and reportedly uses 53% of the world’s coal.[10] Additionally, the second largest coal producer, India, and the fourth largest coal producer, Australia, were other developing countries against including a fossil fuel provision.[11]
The hesitancy of developing nations to implement a fossil fuel provision was evident even at the most recent climate change conference in 2021, COP26. For instance, before COP26 began, there were leaked documents demonstrating that some of the world’s biggest coal producing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Australia were lobbying for the UN to down-play urgency in limiting fossil fuel usage.[12] Moreover, there were lobbying efforts during the conference that led to changes in language that differed from the earlier draft. While an earlier draft of the agreement included the phasing out of fossil fuels, after lobbying from China and India, the agreement’s language was changed to “phase down” coal.[13] Changes were also made so the agreement now says countries should stop burning “unabated” coal and end “insufficient” fossil fuel subsidies, which critics have argued allows leeway for fossil fuel backers.[14]
The final version of the agreement specifically states, “Calls upon Parties to accelerate the development, deployment and dissemination of technologies, and the adoption of policies, to transition towards low-emission energy systems, including by rapidly scaling up the deployment of clean power generation and energy efficiency measures, including accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, recognizing the need for support towards a just transition.”
In the end, the COP26 did produce an unprecedented agreement since this is the first time fossil fuels have been explicitly mentioned. However, the watered-down language of the provision raises doubts of the agreement’s effectiveness.[15] An independent analysis by Climate Action Tracker states that the conditions of the agreement are not enough to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to a level that is necessary to hit the 1.5 degree target that the previous Paris Agreement mentioned.[16]
So, what’s the harm if developing countries don’t take a harder stance on fossil fuel production?
The air pollution caused by fossil fuels can account for about 1 in 5 deaths worldwide.[17]
The inhalation of carbon has already proven to lead to respiratory and cardiovascular disease, systemic inflammation, and neurodegeneration.[18] Also, breathing in the chemicals that come from crude oil has been known to cause a range of symptoms including, chemical pneumonia, dizziness, drowsiness, loss of coordination, nausea, and labored breathing.
Moreover, the continuous output of greenhouse gases will cause the heat from the sun to be trapped, thus warming the planet. If warming continues, sea levels will continue to rise, hurricanes will become stronger, floods and droughts will be more frequent, more species will become extinct, and more and more unforeseen consequences will occur. It is estimated that there will be 216 million climate refugees by 2050.[19]
So, while the COP26 agreement is unprecedented and a step in the right direction, more still needs to be done in the fight against climate change.
Emily Mariano is a second-year student at Suffolk University Law School. She graduated in 2020 from George Washington University and has since interned at the Massachusetts’s Attorney General’s Office in the Environmental Crimes Strike Force Division.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHBL or Suffolk University Law School.
Sources
[1] Angela Dewan et al., COP26 Climate Deal Includes Historic Reference to Fossil Fuels But Doesn’t Meet Urgency of the Crisis, CNN (Nov. 13, 2021) https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/13/world/cop26-agreement-final-climate-intl/index.html
[2] United Nations Climate Change, History of the Convention https://unfccc.int/process/the-convention/history-of-the-convention#eq-1
[3] Melissa Denchak, Are the Effects of Global Warming Really that Bad?, NRDC (March 15, 2016) https://www.nrdc.org/stories/are-effects-global-warming-really-bad
[4] United Nations Climate Change, Conference of the Parties (COP), https://unfccc.int/process/bodies/supreme-bodies/conference-of-the-parties-cop
[5] Id.
[6]Acciona, Achievements of the Conference of the Parties, https://www.activesustainability.com/climate-change/achievements-of-the-conference-of-the-parties/?_adin=02021864894
[7]Mark McKenzie, Key Outcomes of COP25, KPMG, https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/insights/2019/12/key-outcomes-of-cop25.html
[8]Client Earth, Fossil fuels and climate change: the facts, https://www.clientearth.org/latest/latest-updates/stories/fossil-fuels-and-climate-change-the-facts/#:~:text=The%20Intergovernmental%20Panel%20on%20Climate,from%20fossil%20fuels%20and%20industry.
[9] Sammy Westfall, Why has it been so hard to get fossil fuels mentioned in U.N. climate deals?, Washington Post (Nov. 12, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/10/fossil-fuels-mention-cop-draft-paris/
[10] Eamon Barrett, China burned over half the world’s coal last year, despite Xi Jinping’s net-zero pledge, Fortune (March 29, 2021), https://fortune.com/2021/03/29/china-coal-energy-electricity-xi-jinping-2020-ember/
[11] World Atlas, The Top 10 Coal Producers Worldwide, https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-top-10-coal-producers-worldwide.html
[12] Justin Rowlatt & Tom Gerken, COP26: Document leak reveals nations lobbying to change key climate report, BBC NEWS (Oct. 21, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58982445
[13]Katrina Bishop, China and India will have to explain themselves on coal, COP26 president says, CNBC (Nov. 14, 2021),https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/14/china-india-will-have-to-explain-themselves-on-coal-cop26-president.html
[14]Washington Post, The Glasgow Climate pact, annotated (Nov. 13, 2021) https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2021/glasgow-climate-pact-full-text-cop26/
[15] Bishop, supra note 15.
[16] Id.
[17]Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Fossil fuel air pollution responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide (Feb. 9, 2021), https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-responsible-for-1-in-5-deaths-worldwide/
[18]Juciano Gasparotte & Katia Da Boit Martinello, Coal as an energy source and its impact on human health, 2 Energy GeoScience, 113, 113 (2020).
[19]World Bank, Climate Change Could Force 216 Million People to Migrate within Their Own Countries by 2050, (Sept. 13, 2021), https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/09/13/climate-change-could-force-216-million-people-to-migrate-within-their-own-countries-by-2050