Targets alone will not solve the climate crisis
A serious step forward and yet not nearly enough. Such is the state of global action to address the existential threat of climate change following this week’s groundbreaking Leaders Summit organised by the White House.
Leaders from every G20 country turned up for the two-day online gathering, the first of its kind to be staged by a US president, and the host set an admirable pace. President Joe Biden announced what is by some measures the biggest climate step made by any US administration — a pledge to cut emissions by at least 50 per cent by the end of this decade.
That is a significant advance on the commitment made by Barack Obama, the last US president to take climate risk seriously. It marks a welcome break with the four dismal years of inaction wrought by Biden’s science-denying predecessor, Donald Trump.
Importantly, it also underlines an emerging understanding that meeting the safest goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement requires urgent action this decade, not by 2100 or even 2050.
Japan’s premier Yoshihide Suga and Canada’s Justin Trudeau each unveiled new and improved 2030 climate goals. The UK, host of this year’s COP26 UN climate talks, on the eve of the summit set a new commitment to cut emissions by a striking 78 per cent by 2035.
President Xi Jinping said China, by far the world’s largest emitter, would phase down its use of coal in the second half of this decade, while South Korea vowed to stop financing new overseas coal projects. Even Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who once made a campaign pledge to pull his country out of the Paris climate accord, brought forward his nation’s carbon neutrality goal by 10 years from 2060 to 2050.
All this matters. The Paris agreement is based on the understanding that countries cannot be forced to cut their emissions. But the hope is that climate laggards will be prodded into action by the steps taken by more ambitious nations.
Biden’s summit made this idea flesh. It starkly revealed the growing isolation of leaders such as Australia’s Scott Morrison, who did not set a new climate target and has yet to lock in a firm date for reaching net zero emissions.
The wider point is that, if acted upon, these pledges will collectively help bring the world closer to the 45 per cent fall in emissions that scientists say is needed by 2030 to avoid the 1.5C of warming the Paris agreement is supposed to prevent. Closer, but by no means close enough.
The leaders summit came days after the International Energy Agency warned the world was on track for the second biggest increase in energy-related carbon emissions in history this year. Just as emissions soared after the 2008 financial crisis, so it is clear that the global recovery from the last year’s pandemic-related economic shock is fossil-fuelled.
This will not change until governments bring their climate targets to life with robust, concrete action. So far, there is too little sign of this happening anywhere on the globe.
Two measures in particular require immediate action. Subsidies for fossil fuels must end, and a meaningful price must be placed on carbon. This requires government action. Corporate climate initiatives are welcome, such as those that Amazon, Unilever and others unveiled this week to tackle deforestation.
But as France’s Emmanuel Macron told the White House summit: “Taking action for the climate means regulating, and regulating at an international level. If we don’t set a price for carbon, there will be no transition.”