The IPCC Special Report (October 2018) and COP 24 in Katowice Poland (December 2018)
Header source: https://cop24.gov.pl/news/news-details/news/invitation-to-collaboration-on-cop24/.
As part of the decision to adopt the Paris Agreement, the IPCC, the United Nations body for assessing the science relating to climate change, was invited to produce, in 2018, a Special Report on global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways. This occurred on 8 October 2018.
The report highlighted a number of climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C, or more. For instance, by 2100, global sea level rise would be 10 cm lower with global warming of 1.5°C compared with 2°C. The likelihood of an Arctic Ocean free of sea ice in summer would be once per century with global warming of 1.5°C, compared with at least once per decade with 2°C. Coral reefs would decline by 70-90 percent with global warming of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2°C.
The report found that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require "rapid and far-reaching" transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching 'net zero' around 2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air. We are already seeing the consequences of 1°C of global warming through more extreme weather, rising sea levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice, among other changes [1]
The IPCC report was then carried forward to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, 24th session (COP 24) held in Katowice Poland in the following December. In somewhat fractious talks, countries at the conference settled on most of the tricky elements of the “rulebook” for putting the 2015 Paris agreement into practice, including how governments will measure, report on and verify their emissions-cutting efforts.
Largely absent from these talks, which had a technical focus, was the key question of how countries will step up their targets on cutting emissions. The key deadline is 2020, when countries must show they have met targets set a decade ago for cutting their emissions, and when they must affirm new, much tougher targets. In other words, the world has little more than a decade to bring emissions under control and halve them, which would help to stabilise the climate. [2]
Are we getting there?
After years in which the world’s carbon emissions appeared to be stabilising, they are on the rise again. Coal use continues and oil is still the engine of much of the world’s economy. Clean energy is coming on-stream at a faster rate than many predicted, and the costs of it have come down rapidly, but its adoption needs to be speeded up. Some also said we need to invest in projects to remove carbon from the atmosphere, and a new focus of the talks is helping countries to adapt to the effects of climate change.
Were countries united at the talks?
The US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait joined forces to prevent the conference fully embracing the IPCC’s findings, watering down a statement to a weak commendation of the timing of the scientists’ report. "Australia joined with the US in a celebration of coal" (!), but the EU, a handful of other developed countries and scores of developing nations including the poorest and most vulnerable affirmed that they would strive to meet the IPCC’s advice on limiting warming to no more than 1.5C.
The UN met again in Madrid, Spain in 2019 for COP 25, the second meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement (and the 25th UN Climate Change Conference), to thrash out the final elements of the Paris rulebook and begin work on future emissions targets. As it turned out COP 25 was a miserable failure and a lost opportunity, with Australia being a large part of the problem for insisting on its right to calculate its emissions reductions by using the accounting trick or loophole of "carry-over credits" from a different climate treaty: the Kyoto Protocol, the effect of which would be that it only needs to achieve about 10% of its Paris commitment of 26 % below 2005 levels by 2030. Australia's intransigence on this issue was in large part to reason that the can was again kicked down the road to COP 26.
Also up for discussion at COP 25 were a host of technical matters related to carbon markets, as well as details on how poorer countries would be compensated for climate-related damage, and wording for how countries would ratchet up their ambition next year. Many of these issues were "resolved" by watered down compromises.
The crunch will come in 2021 when the last UN climate change conference (COP 26) before the Paris Agreement (postponed from 2020 in view of the Covid proble) is due to take place in Glasgow in November.
[1] Source on the IPCC Special Report: ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 8 October 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181008075147.htm>.
[2] Source on COP24: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/16/what-was-agreed-at-cop24-in-poland-and-why-did-it-take-so-long
[3] Ibid.
As part of the decision to adopt the Paris Agreement, the IPCC, the United Nations body for assessing the science relating to climate change, was invited to produce, in 2018, a Special Report on global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways. This occurred on 8 October 2018.
The report highlighted a number of climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C, or more. For instance, by 2100, global sea level rise would be 10 cm lower with global warming of 1.5°C compared with 2°C. The likelihood of an Arctic Ocean free of sea ice in summer would be once per century with global warming of 1.5°C, compared with at least once per decade with 2°C. Coral reefs would decline by 70-90 percent with global warming of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2°C.
The report found that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require "rapid and far-reaching" transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching 'net zero' around 2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air. We are already seeing the consequences of 1°C of global warming through more extreme weather, rising sea levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice, among other changes [1]
The IPCC report was then carried forward to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, 24th session (COP 24) held in Katowice Poland in the following December. In somewhat fractious talks, countries at the conference settled on most of the tricky elements of the “rulebook” for putting the 2015 Paris agreement into practice, including how governments will measure, report on and verify their emissions-cutting efforts.
Largely absent from these talks, which had a technical focus, was the key question of how countries will step up their targets on cutting emissions. The key deadline is 2020, when countries must show they have met targets set a decade ago for cutting their emissions, and when they must affirm new, much tougher targets. In other words, the world has little more than a decade to bring emissions under control and halve them, which would help to stabilise the climate. [2]
Are we getting there?
After years in which the world’s carbon emissions appeared to be stabilising, they are on the rise again. Coal use continues and oil is still the engine of much of the world’s economy. Clean energy is coming on-stream at a faster rate than many predicted, and the costs of it have come down rapidly, but its adoption needs to be speeded up. Some also said we need to invest in projects to remove carbon from the atmosphere, and a new focus of the talks is helping countries to adapt to the effects of climate change.
Were countries united at the talks?
The US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait joined forces to prevent the conference fully embracing the IPCC’s findings, watering down a statement to a weak commendation of the timing of the scientists’ report. "Australia joined with the US in a celebration of coal" (!), but the EU, a handful of other developed countries and scores of developing nations including the poorest and most vulnerable affirmed that they would strive to meet the IPCC’s advice on limiting warming to no more than 1.5C.
The UN met again in Madrid, Spain in 2019 for COP 25, the second meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement (and the 25th UN Climate Change Conference), to thrash out the final elements of the Paris rulebook and begin work on future emissions targets. As it turned out COP 25 was a miserable failure and a lost opportunity, with Australia being a large part of the problem for insisting on its right to calculate its emissions reductions by using the accounting trick or loophole of "carry-over credits" from a different climate treaty: the Kyoto Protocol, the effect of which would be that it only needs to achieve about 10% of its Paris commitment of 26 % below 2005 levels by 2030. Australia's intransigence on this issue was in large part to reason that the can was again kicked down the road to COP 26.
Also up for discussion at COP 25 were a host of technical matters related to carbon markets, as well as details on how poorer countries would be compensated for climate-related damage, and wording for how countries would ratchet up their ambition next year. Many of these issues were "resolved" by watered down compromises.
The crunch will come in 2021 when the last UN climate change conference (COP 26) before the Paris Agreement (postponed from 2020 in view of the Covid proble) is due to take place in Glasgow in November.
[1] Source on the IPCC Special Report: ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 8 October 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181008075147.htm>.
[2] Source on COP24: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/16/what-was-agreed-at-cop24-in-poland-and-why-did-it-take-so-long
[3] Ibid.