UN climate
talks failing to address urgency of crisis, says top scientist
COP25 in
Madrid criticised for focusing on details instead of agreeing deep cuts to
emissions
Fiona
Harvey in Madrid
Sun 8 Dec
2019 18.21 GMTLast modified on Sun 8 Dec 2019 20.45 GMT
Urgent UN
talks on tackling the climate emergency are still not addressing the true scale
of the crisis, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has warned, as
high-ranking ministers from governments around the world began to arrive in
Madrid for the final days of negotiations.
Talks are
focusing on some of the rules for implementing the 2015 Paris agreement, but
the overriding issue of how fast the world needs to cut greenhouse gas
emissions has received little official attention.
“We are at
risk of getting so bogged down in incremental technicalities at these
negotiations that we forget to see the forest for the trees,” said Johan
Rockström, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“There is a risk of disappointment in the UN process because of the inability
to recognise that there is an emergency.”
In the next
few days, environment and finance ministers from more than 190 governments will
begin the “high-level segment” of the UN talks, which began on 2 December, and
will finish on Friday. Over the weekend, negotiators produced the latest draft
of a key text on carbon markets, which still does not have the consensus needed
to pass.
The stately
pace of negotiations was in stark contrast with the scenes outside the
conference in Madrid, where on Friday evening more than 500,000 people marched
through the Spanish capital led by the Swedish school striker Greta Thunberg.
Protests continued through the weekend, with Extinction Rebellion and groups
from across the world. On Monday, Thunberg and other youth activists will hold
meetings with officials inside the conference.
Rockström
said the UN conference must grapple urgently with reversing emissions of
greenhouse gases, which are still on the rise despite repeated scientific
warnings over three decades and multiple resolutions by governments to tackle
the problem.
“We must
bend the curve next year,” he told the Guardian, citing stark warnings from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Next year is the year of truth. The
year when we must move decisively to an economy that really starts to reduce
investments in fossil fuels.”
Even the
coal-fired power plants currently planned or in construction are enough to
produce double the amount of carbon that can safely be put in the atmosphere
for the next century, Rockström said.
The
situation was so dire that governments should be starting to consider
geoengineering technology, he said. Such projects could use a combination of
natural and artificial means, from seeding clouds to erecting reflectors in
space.
“Geoengineering
has to be assessed, maybe even piloted already in case we need to deploy it,”
he said. “It makes me very nervous. That is really playing with biological
processes that might kick back in very unexpected ways. But I don’t think we
should rule anything out – an emergency is an emergency.”
As the UN
conference enters its final stages, the role of the UK is likely to come under
much greater scrutiny. Britain will play host to next year’s conference at
which world leaders must pledge much greater cuts in emissions than have yet
been made, if the 2015 Paris accord is to succeed.
Claire
O’Neill, the former Tory climate minister designated to lead next year’s
conference, is in Madrid but cannot make official announcements because of the
“purdah” rules surrounding political announcements in the run-up to the general
election.
However,
the UK’s plans were rated as “insufficient” in a key independent analysis
called the Climate Action Tracker. Despite the government’s eye-catching
commitment last summer to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 – one of the
first major economies to make such a pledge – few measures are in place to keep
pace with the target.
“There has been a dearth of new significant
climate policies in recent years which, if left unaddressed, will leave the UK
missing its medium and long-term targets,” concluded the analysis of global
emissions-cutting plans.
That would
damage the host nation’s credibility at next year’s crucial talks in Glasgow,
campaigners said.
Dr Bill
Hare, a climate scientist and the chief executive of Climate Analytics, which
carried out the study, said it was clear which of the two biggest parties had
the better plans on the issue before this week’s general election.
“While both
major political parties have proposed further climate action, the Conservatives
have not put sufficient proposals on the table to close this gap, whereas [our
analysis shows] the Labour’s £250bn could easily close that gap and push on
towards a 1.5C pathway,” Hare said.
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