New report says governments are not taking climate emergency seriously

A September 15 report on CNN.com is expected to raise important questions about the true commitment of national governments to climate-related goals set out in international agreements such as the 2015 Paris Agreement. This much-vaunted climate emergency that we’ve heard every day since election day 2020 a real emergency, or another narrative promoted by established interests in the hope of using it to justify more grants?

The CNN report makes this a legitimate question. The report cites a watchdog called Climate action monitoring (CAT), who says his analysis of the climate policies adopted by dozens of national governments – including each of the G20 countries and the 27 countries that make up the European Union – comes to the surprising conclusion that none of them is currently in line with meeting the climate goals they all agreed to under the Paris Agreement.

The CAT looked at some low-emission developing countries and found that one – The Gambia – could be what it calls 1.5 compatible, a reference to the Paris target of containing anticipated global warming to not more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But The Gambia and these other developing countries together represent a drop in the bucket of global emissions. What really matters in dealing with this climate emergency that our governments tell us we live in is what the big emitters are doing.

Specifically, what matters most is what China, India and the United States
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do to fight their emissions. These three countries are included in the G20 list, which represents 60% of the world population, 80% of world GDP and 75% of world trade. According to Union of concerned scientists, these three countries combined accounted for 50% of global carbon emissions in 2020, with China alone accounting for 28%.

CNN reports that Niklas Hhne, a founding partner of the New Climate Institute, a CAT partner, said: “In May, following the St. Petersburg Leaders’ Climate and Dialogue Summit, we reported that there seemed to be a good momentum with new commitments for action. climate. But since then, there has been little to no improvement: nothing is. Anyone would think they have plenty of time, when in fact the opposite is true.

Specifically, the CAT blames India, Turkey and Saudi Arabia for being so insecure about meeting these climate commitments that they missed the July 31 deadline for reporting. of their progress. Many other countries, such as Mexico and Brazil, have submitted reports, but without increasing their commitments. Mexico and Brazil have not raised their targets since 2015, and Russia is being singled out for submitting commitments that do not constitute a significant change.

The CAT says the US, Japan and the EU are all almost sufficient to meet their Paris commitments. Presumably, the US score could improve if Congress Democrats succeed in pushing through their massive $ 3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill that is laden with hundreds of billions in new grants, warrants, and other rewards. for their parties that have favored the green energy industries – wind, solar and electric vehicles. But of course like me and other writers like Robert bryce As noted recently, the actual results of these and other political efforts will ultimately be limited by what economic realities allow. Or, as a tech CEO recently told me, the regulatory push can’t destroy people’s livelihoods.

That’s really what it all comes down to at the end of the day. Each of these national governments struggle to reconcile commitments made at global events attended by society’s elites, which have been transported to an international capital in thousands of carbon-emitting private jets, with the realities that face their citizens who struggle to keep their jobs, heat their homes and feed their families.

As seen with massive inflation now taking hold in the United States due to out of control government spending, these two competing ambitions are often incompatible. Thus, public officials are faced with the choice of acting on the narrative that the climate emergency is literally a life or death situation, or of acting to preserve jobs and limit price increases at the grocery store. so they can hopefully keep their own jobs. during the next electoral cycle.

The CAT study indicates that so far almost all of them choose the latter option. What this says about the climate emergency narrative is subject to interpretation.