By David Wojick
About 60 countries just gathered together to try to kick off a global phase out of fossil fuel use. For now it is more of a show than a threat so it is worth watching with some humor. Planning to achieve the impossible has to be funny.
At this point there are just a lot of proposals. By far the funniest is a proposed phase out deadline of 2030 for coal. Do they not know that China is burning over 5 billion tons a year? That India, Indonesia and others are rapidly building fleets of new coal-fired power plants? This madness is the measure of the phase out movement.
The most threatening proposal is for a designing a new Fossil Fuel Treaty (FFT) mandating the phase out that countries can adopt. As a treaty the FFT would be a legally binding instrument enforceable by the Courts. The FFT has its own promoting organization here.
What is most interesting is that such a Treaty has the potential to destabilize the UN Climate Change Program. The UN Program is based on an existing treaty, the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC).
The FFT could compete with the FCCC such as for financial resources and even for jurisdiction. The FCC might even make the FCCC obsolete.
This is no accident since the FFT was born out of frustration with the FCCC. The annual decision meeting of the FCCC is the well known COP which stands for Conference of the Parties.
It took 28 COPs to finally get the words “fossil fuel” into a decision and it had no teeth. The reason is simple. The FCCC COP rules call for decisions to be unanimous so nothing controversial ever gets said. At COP 30 there was a movement to get a decision calling for national roadmaps for phasing out fossil fuels. It failed but the present phase out Conference was authorized as a concession.
Given that the FFT is not part of the Conference charter it is far from clear what connection this Treaty has to the UN, quite possibly none. So it is certainly possible that the FFT movement could compete with the UN Program for attention, funding and other resources. The UN Program may have spawned its demise.
The Conference itself made some progress down the road to impossibility that the FFT movement can tap into. France claims to have created a model phase out roadmap. I have not seen it but it likely uses a lot of nuclear power. France figures that if the world goes nuclear their companies will get a lot of the work.
There has also been created a so-called “Panel of Experts” to help countries develop national phase out roadmaps. It is described here.
They are described as scientists and economists and I do not see any engineers. More fantasy that.
It is easy to see how developing a phase out roadmap can lead to adopting a phase out treaty to enforce it. All it takes is a strong green government which most countries get from time to time when the political pendulum swings far left.
It is also easy to see this FFT movement replacing the FCCC. Why spend a fortune on huge ten day global meetings where nothing gets decided? Better to operate at the national level picking off one country at a time.
That the goal is impossible and ill informed has little bearing on the political reality. The Fossil Fuel Treaty movement is potentially even more dangerous than the UN Climate Change program. It bears careful watching.
Stay tuned to CFACT as this hatchling monster grows.
