Essay by Eric Worrall
Club of Rome have finally noticed the world’s premier climate conferences are being run by petroleum states.
Open Letter on COP reform to All States that are Parties to the Convention
Mr. Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC Secretariat and UN Secretary-General António Guterres
November 15, 2024
Excellencies,
We, the undersigned, write today to reiterate and update the call for COP reform, which was first conveyed in our open letter to the UNFCCC Secretariat, dated February 23, 2023.
We recognise the important diplomatic milestones of the past 28 years of climate negotiations. A remarkable consensus has been achieved with over 195 countries having agreed to strive to hold global warming to 1.5°C. We also recognise the key role of the UNFCCC Secretariat in helping to bring all 195 countries along the steps necessary to establish the global policy framework, which is underpinned by the Paris Agreement and its subsequent COP decisions.
Beyond the Paris goals, countries have now agreed to phase out fossil fuels, end inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies, stop deforestation by 2030, operationalise carbon trading globally, and most have joined the Global Methane Pledge. Governments have pledged $100 billion annually to the Green Climate Fund, and the Loss and Damage Fund is officially established.
Despite some of its flaws, and limited resources, the global policy framework is scientifically rigorous and economically sound and complete. But the framework alone is not enough to solve the problems.
Global emissions continue to increase, carbon sinks are being degraded and we can no longer exclude the possibility of surpassing 2.9°C of warming by 2100. Our first encounter with 1.5°C was accompanied by unprecedented human impacts coupled with enormous climate costs running into the hundreds of billions in 2023. Science tells us that global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 7.5% annually to have any chance of staying within the 1.5°C threshold, a prerequisite for the stability of our planet and a livable future for much of humanity. In 2024, the task is unequivocal: global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 4 billion tonnes.
28 COPs have delivered us with the policy framework to achieve this. However, its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity. This is what compels our call for a fundamental overhaul of the COP. We need a shift from negotiation to implementation, enabling the COP to deliver on agreed commitments and ensure the urgent energy transition and phase-out of fossil energy.
We outline below our suggested measures for reform:
1. Improve the selection process for COP presidencies
We need strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy. Host countries must demonstrate their high level of ambition to uphold the goals of the Paris Agreement.2. Streamline for speed and scale
With the global policy map fully developed, COP must shift away from negotiations to the delivery of concrete action. COP meetings must be transformed into smaller, more frequent, solution-driven meetings where countries report on progress, are held accountable in line with the latest science, and discuss important solutions for finance, technology and equity. This work must be supplemented by the benchmarking of national progress using the UN Gap Reports. This approach will accelerate action and allow for timely adjustments based on emerging scientific findings and changing global circumstances.3. Improve implementation and accountability
The COP process must be strengthened with mechanisms to hold countries accountable for their climate targets and commitments. Whilst the Paris framework was intended to operate in “delivery mode”, it is not working because governments are not held to account to ensure that national action plans align with the latest scientific evidence. The Global Stocktake process is an important start but it must be strengthened with enhanced reporting and benchmarking, rigorous peer-review processes, independent scientific oversight and transparent tracking of pledges and action.4. Ensure robust tracking of climate financing
A growing proportion of climate financing pledges are now being disbursed as interest-bearing loans, thereby exacerbating the debt burden for climate vulnerable nations. We need standardised definitions and criteria for what qualifies as climate finance, along with common reporting frameworks and tracking mechanisms to verify climate financing flows. All of these measures are critical for rebuilding trust and accountability and for mobilising the necessary resources.5. Amplify the voice of authoritative science
Whilst the climate COP does rely on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other related bodies, such as the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), it does not have its own permanent scientific advisory body that is formally part of the COP structure. We share growing concerns that climate COPs do not sufficiently integrate or action up the latest scientific evidence. The CBD COP has its own permanent scientific advisory body, which has provided a technical and scientific underpinning for the CBD. And the same could be replicated within the climate COP.6. Recognise the interdependencies between poverty, inequality and planetary instability
New research from the Earth Commission and from Earth4All affirms the important linkages between ecological and social change processes. If the climate COP is to be more impactful, it must acknowledge that the current rate of nature loss (e.g. freshwater scarcity, land and soil degradation, pollination decline, ocean pollution) is affecting the stability of the planet. Moreover, planetary stability, now at grave risk, is impossible without decisive action on equality, justice and poverty alleviation. This is why we call for a Climate-Poverty Policy Envoy to ensure that these critical links are anchored in the negotiations and implementation actions, especially through dedicated spaces for vulnerable communities to advocate for these linkages.7. Enhance equitable representation
Despite the climate COP’s new disclosure rules, a record number of 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access at COP28, nearly four times more than COP27. The fact that there were far more fossil fuel lobbyists than official representatives from scientific institutions, Indigenous communities and vulnerable nations reflects a systemic imbalance in COP representation. Improving the management of corporate interests within COPs proceedings will require stronger transparency and disclosure rules and clear guidelines that require companies to demonstrate alignment between their climate commitments, business model and lobbying activities.In closing, let us reiterate the important role the UNFCCC has played and will continue to play in ensuring ambition on climate change. There is no doubt that climate change is a global challenge and must be solved through multilateral negotiations alongside ambition at the National level through Nationally Determined Contributions. The Paris agreement and subsequent COP decisions have laid a robust foundation for the global policy framework on climate action. Now, we must work together with urgency and purpose, transforming the climate COP so that it can take strategic, action-oriented and accountable decisions to deliver the scale of ambition commensurate with the defining challenge of our time.
SIGNATORIES
Source: https://www.clubofrome.org/cop-reform-2024/
Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Executive Chair, Earth4All and Global Ambassador for the Club of Rome
Prof. Dr. Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Action Research
Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary-General of the United Nations
Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland
Christiana Figueres, Former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Connie Hedegaard, Chair of the Board for the KR Foundation and former EU Former EU Commissioner for Climate Action
Dr. Carlos Nobre, Member of the Joint Steering Committee of the World Climate Research Programme & the Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health
Dr. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director-General, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Dr. Bertrand Piccard, President, Solar Impulse Foundation
Esmeralda of Belgium, President of the Leopold III Fund for Nature Exploration and Conservation
Maria João Rodrigues, President, Foundation for European Progressive Studies
Youba Sokona, Chair, African Institute for Sustainable Energy and System Analysis and former Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Dr. Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water
Sharan Burrow, former General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation
Phyllis Cuttino, President and CEO, The Climate Reality Project
Ilona Szabó de Carvalho, Co-founder and President, Igarapé Institute
Eva Zabey, Executive-Director, Business for Nature
Sheela Patel, Director, Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres and Global Ambassador for the Race to Zero and Race to Resilience
Dr. Gunhild A. Stordalen, Co-founder and Executive Chair, EAT
Marie-Claire Graf, Co-Founder, Youth Negotiators Academy & YOUNGO Focal Point COP26
Paul Shrivastava, Co-President, The Club of Rome
Club of Rome are famous for their 1972 publication The Limits to Growth, an absurdly simplistic attempt to suggest we will all run out of stuff before the end of this century.
One of my favourite responses to the Limits to Growth was published by The New York Times shortly after the publication of Limits.
… “The Limits to Growth,” in our view, is an empty and misleading work. Its imposing apparatus of computer technology and systems jargon conceals a kind of intellectual Rube Goldberg device—one which takes arbitrary assumptions, shakes them up and comes out with arbitrary conclusions that have the ring of science. “Limits” pretends to a degree of certainty so exaggerated as to obscure the few modest (and unoriginal) insights that it genuinely con tains. Less than pseudoscience and little more than polemical fiction, “The Limits to Growth” is best summarized not as a rediscovery of the laws of nature but as a rediscovery of the oldest maxim of computer science: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
…
As a first approximation of the future, the authors assume that the world is utterly incapable of adjusting to problems of scarcity. Technology stagnates and pollution is ignored, even as it chokes millions to death. A shortage of raw materials prevents industry and agriculture from keeping up with population growth. World reserves of vital materials (silver, tungsten, mercury, etc.) are exhausted within 40 years. Around 2020 the pinch becomes tight enough to cause a fall in per capita income. A few decades later, malnutrition and lagging health services abruptly reverse the climbing population trend. By the year 2100 the resource base has shrunk so badly that the world economy is unable to sustain even 19th‐century living standards.
…
It is no coincidence that all the simulations based on the Meadows world model invariably end in collapse. As in any simulation, the results depend on the information initially fed to the computer. And the “Limits” team fixes the wheel; no matter how ‘many times you play there is only one possible outcome. Critical to their model is the notion that growth produces stresses (pollution, resource demands, food requiremeats) which multiply geometrically. Like compound interest on a savings account, these stresses accumulate at a pace that constantly accelerates: Every child born is not only another mouth to feed but another potential parent. Every new factory not only drains away exhaustible resources but increases our capacity to build more factories. Geometric (or as mathematicians prefer to call it, exponential) growth must eventually produce spectacular results. If the Indians who sold Manhattan 300 years ago for $24 could have left their money untouched in a bank paying 7 per cent (a number chosen no more arbitrarily than many in “Limits”) they would have more than $25‐billion today.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/02/archives/the-limits-to-growth-a-report-for-the-club-of-romes-project-on-the.html
…
You would think after an intellectual blunder like “The Limits to Growth” that they would have changed their name or something, but every so often The Club of Rome still pops their head above the parapet to deliver a doom laden pronouncement, or scold the world for not being run the way they would like it to be run.
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Its quite amazing how little activists understand how UN bodies work,
The UNFCC is a convention which has been signed up to by a number of nation states. Those states are the parties referred to in the Conference of the Parties (COP).
If you exclude any party from any COP then you can easily see how those parties will withdraw from the Convention. If they do that they will not be subject to any decisions that the UNFCC eventually comes to so they can continue doing what they do without and comebacks.
Whatever rump of nation states is left after the expelled or restricted nation states have departed will only be shooting themselves in the foot as literally nothing will change.
As a maritime journalist I see exactly the same thing happening around the proceedings of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Environmentalist NGOs continually claim that there is no progress on issues but again it is the majority of the member states themselves that do not want to change the status quo.
Maybe the U.S. should resign from the UN and let the whole thing just fade away. It’s pretty useless as it is.
Wait just a minute . . . didn’t Michael Mann predict that the East River, which the UN building in New York is adjacent to, would have flooded by now to the extent of covering highways alongside it? Or maybe it was the West River . . . little difference in terms of SLR.
Since Micheal Mann “knows his stuff”, it’s just a matter of months now before nature itself takes care of the UN. Not fade away, but wash away.
/sarc
IIRC, it was Hansen, and the Wets Side Highway (on the Hudson River).
James Hansen, but just as moronic no matter who said it.
Yeah, both you and Retired_Engineer_Jim are correct: it was James Hansen that made that prediction, not Michael Mann.
I’m getting too old to trust my memory and should have checked before posting.
“Test all things, hold fast that which is good”
— I Thessalonians 5:21-22, The Bible, NKJV
US out of UN. UN out of US.
An excellent idea. They should go to the Eu, which is almost completely modelled after their unaccountable, unelected, power-hungry, tax-gobbling, fat bureaucracy system.
FAILURE is not a limiting factor on their road to perpetuate their collection of myths … we should all be so ‘lucky’ in OUR endeavors …
“A remarkable consensus has been achieved with over 195 countries having agreed to strive to hold global warming to 1.5°C.”
This is a deliberately misleading statement. The vast majority of countries signed up to the Paris agreement because they were promised free money. These countries have absolutely no intention of reducing their carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, all developing countries intend to increase their carbon dioxide emissions because they want to grow their economies and reduce poverty in their countries. They will never agree to western demands which will impact their economic growth prospects.
Exactly.
I was expecting to see their letter also signed by –
Frank Gallagher – Shameless.
And water is wet and the sun rises in the east.
Club Of Rome: No Longer Fit For Purpose. There, I fixed it.
Its purpose was only ever self-aggrandisement and grabbing money by propaganda.
That is still the only purpose it has.
Didn’t they move to Davos, and change the name to WEF?
Not WEF, it’s WTF!
OK, I’ve waited all day for someone to pose the obvious question –
“what have the (club of) Romans ever done for US?”
authoritative science
Argumentum ad verecundiam. How original.
“ over 195 countries having agreed to strive to hold global warming to 1.5°C”
The arrogance and stupidity of these people just beggars belief.
It was never about the climate at all, was it?
You got that right. It is all about the money, i.e., redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor.
From the poor in rich countries to the rich in poor countries.
Not from rich to poor: from the middle class to themselves.
Nope. From poor people to richer people.
1. Free subsidised electricity for those who can afford solar panels, paid for by those who can’t.
2. Subsidised EVs for those who can afford shiny new 2nd (or 3rd) cars, paid for by those who can’t.
3. Massive, subsidised wind and solar farms for rich plutocrats, paid for by ordinary consumers.
4. Huge handouts for rich dictators in poor countries, paid for by poor people’s taxes in rich countries.
David, I agree. Never about climate, it’s the same as its always been, Depopulation. They’ve decided that the best way to accomplish that goal is to destroy the international economy by promoting economically destructive wind/solar/batteries. In their minds eliminating a billion people this century is “more humanitarian” than having an economic collapse next century when the requirement would be for two billion eliminations. A billion life’s saved!
I first read about the Club of Rome “plan” here on WUWT a few years ago. I thought the author was nuts for his “conspiracy theory”. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
To paraphrase 12 Monkeys. “it’s about following orders, doing what you’re told”.
Still the heathens question the deity-
Why does green piety so often come with a huge dose of hypocrisy?
Australia must be a ‘reliable energy superpower’ over a renewable superpower: Caroline Marcus
There’s no limits to growth with fickles.
Millenarian preachers with the same sort of track record have the good manners to sit down and shut up.
Has everyone here finally realised that the Club of Rome ‘is a big club, and we ain’t in it’, to quote the late George Carlin?
It’s a bit like Bilderberg, by invitation only.
I’m yet to understand why unelected, unaccountable folks, however worthy and rich/august get to think that they should ‘rule the world’ by fiat, decree and propagandising?
Has the Club of Rome ever published an audit of its members, detailing their carbon guzzling over a 10 year period?
If they want any credibility whatsoever, that’s about the minimum requirement to show that they can be respected, rather than be forced to bow down before them.
Even then, there’s zero reason to say that ‘The Club of Rome says so, therefore…’ has any cogency.
It’s like saying ‘Anthony Fauci said so, therefore…’ Not mention ‘Tedros and Bill Gates said so, therefore….’
The Golden Rule: Those with the gold make the rules.
Story tip
20 lessons for the post-truth world
Carole Cadwalladr
5 You have more power than you think.
We’re supposed to feel powerless. That’s the strategy. But we’re not. If you’re a US institution or organisation, form an emergency committee. Bring in experts. Learn from people who have lived under authoritarianism. Ask advice.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/17/how-to-survive-the-broligarchy-20-lessons-for-the-post-truth-world-donald-trump
No 10 is hilarious. The derangement goes on.
They’re getting weirder… 🙂
The Club of Rome hasn’t been fit for purpose ever since its 1972 publication. I spent part of 1973 debunking some of its claims – as it turned out. I was hired as part of a team to evaluate them for what was then known as the Rothschild Think Tank.
Words like “geometric” and “exponential” and “acceleration” have a precise, defined mathematical meaning. People who do not know this sometimes use these words as descriptive of a fearsome outcome. They are as stupid as they are ignorant. There is no real meaning in the phrase “a pace that constantly accelerates”. I know that you are quoting the newspaper New York Times but that quote is open to criticisms similar to those from Club of Rome.
People lacking scientific skills should not write in pseudo-scientific terms.
Geoff S
Scientist
Unfortunately, most of the people lacking scientific skills also lack the self-awareness and intellectual honesty to admit that they lack these skills,
Dissent from our orthodoxy shall not be tolerated!!!
So they’ve made it obvious that they only care about promoting their own solutions and not actually addressing the problem those “solutions” were sold to all of us to address.
Club of Rome: Not fit for purpose.
The demand for “authoritative science” undermines all the rest. Arguing from authority is what churches and religion generally engages in.
Science is always skeptical of authority. ClimTe Science, like all the other incarnations of Post Normal Science, is politics and certainly not real science.
CliSciFi is the technical term.
They want to set up their own poodle science group instead of the IPCC. Big prob if it comes up with “Erm sorry no climate emergency”
… it does not have its own permanent scientific advisory body that is formally part of the COP structure.
In short, it wants a hand-picked ‘advisory body’ which will transcend the scientific method by refusing membership to any scientist who doesn’t pledge allegiance to the party line. There’ll be no steenkin’ skepticism nor questioning nor contrary evidence, thank you.
Surest way to end this rot is to pull back the curtain and let everyone see the creepy little minions working the levers and microphones to persuade us all we are on a path to oblivion when, in fact, the lessons of recent history tell a tale of continuous improvement in the wellbeing of people and the planet. It I would be a timely event given the movie Wicked has recently released. Perhaps we can all learn the lesson again of that classic Wizard of Oz where Dorothy learned all her fears were self inflicted.
The NYTimes published that review?. There must have been a change in the party line since then.
The Club of Rome is still alive and kicking??? . . . who knew!
I thought they died an ignoble death from embarrassment over their outlandish predictions (none of which came true) in their “Limits to Growth” publication, as noted in the above article.
The fact (per their Open Letter given in the above article) that they address the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC Secretariat and the UN Secretary-General as “Excellencies” show just how fawningly woke the Club of Rome has become.
Open letter to GOP attendants: go home and smell the coffee.
Defund the Club of Rome.
We know it’s all bull feathers. If the “club” is serious about climate all they need to say is quit wasting money on wind/solar/batteries and “insist” on the immediate deployment of small scale modular nuclear on an emergency basis to save the planet
Back in 1975, just after he’d been elected governor of California for the first time, Jerry Brown began talking like no occupant of California’s highest office ever had.
“There is no free lunch,” he said. “This is an era of limits and we all had better get used to it.” “Small is beautiful.”
Jerry Brown and The Club Of Rome are no different than Thomas Malthus, who invented the “Era of Limits” when In 1798 he published anonymously the first edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society
I met Sandrine Dixson-Declève once in Brussels and tried to explain to her the facts about CAGW, apparently with no success. At that time she was working for Hart Publications as a writer for articles on energy and I thought that she would understand energy issues. Apparently not, but she rose to the top of some dung heap known as The Club Of Rome, so apparently you don’t need to understand a thing to succeed in this pile.