Whether the world cuts carbon emissions fast enough to secure a 1.5-degree planet depends on the arms race for clean-tech dominance between the US and China.
It does not depend significantly on anything done, and even less said, at the COP28 summit in Dubai, a process that risks becoming a net negative for progress, if it has not already crossed that line as a full army corps of lobbyists converge with 97,000 others at petroleum ground zero.
Cop28 kicked off last week in Dubai. Credit: AP
The annual COP gathering is itself a fossilised racket, an anachronistic showdown between the West and a victim category of “developing countries” that is frozen in time and contains some of the richest and most brazen polluters, or others that still build coal plants and persecute ecologists.
The environmental press corps will anguish over whether the text progresses from a “phase-down” to a “phase-out” of coal power plants, and whether petrostates lift their veto on such language for oil and gas. Passions will fly over a get-out clause for “abated” fossil fuels, and whether carbon capture really counts.
The language matters, and the precise wording can be mobilised for climate lawfare in civil courts, at least in rule of law states. But technology and geo-economic reality are already moving faster than the COP curriculum can keep up.
“A global, irreversible, solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets, without any further climate policies,” concluded a recent paper by the World Bank and Europe’s leading universities.
The “technological learning rate” of solar, wind, and now batteries is so relentless that a 24/7 mix is already cheaper than new coal in most of the world, and will become massively cheaper almost everywhere over time.
The report said the priority now is to sort out the details, upgrade grids, and channel the necessary funds to Africa. It is also a ferocious indictment of the “energy modelling community” that failed to see this coming.
Hot air: The COP climate conference is a fossilised racket
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08.12.2023
Whether the world cuts carbon emissions fast enough to secure a 1.5-degree planet depends on the arms race for clean-tech dominance between the US and China.
It does not depend significantly on anything done, and even less said, at the COP28 summit in Dubai, a process that risks becoming a net negative for progress, if it has not already crossed that line as a full army corps of lobbyists converge with 97,000 others at petroleum ground zero.
Cop28 kicked off last week in Dubai. Credit: AP
The annual COP........
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