COP30 Shakedown On The Table Again

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Is it me, or have things gone quiet at COP30?

From reports coming out of Belem, the COP30 President is working behind the scenes on two main topics:

1) Phasing out fossil fuels.

With many countries, such as India, not even bothering to submit updated NDCs to establish targets beyond 2030, and with many others more or less worthless, as China’s for instance, COP30 is again trying to secure a commitment to phase out fossil fuels.

That, however, is no more likely to succeed than it did last year. While the Brazilians are trying to shame the oil-producing states, the biggest obstacle, as ever, is China and India. They, along with many other developing countries, know they cannot run their economies without fossil fuels, never mind grow them.

COP28 weakly called for a “transition away from fossil fuels”, much to the dismay of those who wanted stronger action. Despite attempts to strengthen the commitment, COP29 simply repeated it.

Don’t expect anything much different this time.

2) Money

Which brings us back to money, which is really what all these COPs boil down to:

https://cfact.us1.list-manage.com/track/click

The Draft Text includes this clause:

You may recall that developing countries demanded $1.3 trillion a year by 2035 in Baku a year ago. Supposedly this was to adapt to climate change and invest in renewables. In practice, it was just a shakedown of guilt-ridden, gullible richer countries.

In the event, they got a promise of $300 billion, which was widely and ungratefully dismissed as “a paltry sum” and “woefully inadequate”!

With the US now out of the Paris Agreement, the UK’s share of that $300 billion, based on GDP, would be around $36 billion. The chances of that appearing, given the state of our national finances is somewhere between Slim and None. And, in Muhammad Ali’s words, Slim has just left town!

According to the BBC, climate finance just struggled over $100 billion in 2022:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20241115-five-charts-explaining-a-trillion-dollar-climate-problem

Provisional OECD data suggest this figure has not risen by since. Most of the money is, in any case, either redirected from other aid budgets or is in the from of repayable loans.

This is what OXFAM had to say a year ago:

Responding to the COP29 climate finance agreement, in which rich countries agree to mobilize $300 billion a year to help Global South countries cope with warming temperatures and switch to renewable energy, Oxfam International’s Climate Change Policy Lead, Nafkote Dabi, said:

“The terrible verdict from the Baku climate talks shows that rich countries view the Global South as ultimately expendable, like pawns on a chessboard. The $300 billion so-called ‘deal’ that poorer countries have been bullied into accepting is unserious and dangerous —a soulless triumph for the rich, but a genuine disaster for our planet and communities who are being flooded, starved, and displaced today by climate breakdown. And as for promises of future funding? They’re just as hollow as the deal itself.

“The money on the table is not only a pittance in comparison to what’s really needed –it’s not even real “money”, by and large. Rather, it’s a motley mix of loans and privatized investment –a global Ponzi scheme that the private equity vultures and public relations people will now exploit. The destruction of our planet is avoidable, but not with this shabby and dishonorable deal. The richest polluters need to wise up —and pay up.”

No doubt a form of words will be found that satisfies nobody. There will be the usual recriminations and the world will carry on as before.

The whole show will be back on the road again next winter in Turkey, where we will be treated to exactly the same circus.