Climate Change; Indecision at COP25 in Madrid; Fiddling as the Planet Burns

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COP25 in Madrid has ended and COP26 will happen in Glasgow next year to continue the discussions.  Everybody has been disappointed that COP25 did not achieve anything of value - I am surprised that people were disappointed.  COPs are talking shops where they say good words and express concerns but by their very structure, they are not supposed to achieve anything much of value.  This has been going on since Kyoto 1997.  Paris 2015 was important as it seemed that at least it was realised that global warming should be limited to below 2C in 2100 but ideally attempts would be made to keep it no more than 1.5C. I did not believe anything will happen, and I said that again before COP25 and I do not believe much will change in COP26.  The world will continue to aggravate global warming, and 3 to 4C rise by 2100 is well on the cards.

The situation is really very simple and there are  several flaws in the whole process:  
To start with, number one reason that has been driving global warming is never seriously on the agenda - population growth. More than 2.5 billion people in China and India have joined the over-consumption binge of the developed OECD countries in a big way.  Even on the assumption that global population might stabilise by year 2100, consumption from other Asian and African countries will continue to drive the need for more energy - burning more fossil fuels and aggravating global warming further.  

A second problem in meeting any global warming target is what I call the 'Coal Trap'. The world faces a dilemma about how to produce the energy required to maintain a decent functionality and meeting peoples' aspirations for better standard of living.  There is no technological solution in sight that will rid us of consuming fossil fuels by 2050 and probably much longer.  There are many projections about renewable energy that is supposed to replace fossil fuels over the next few decades.  But, look seriously and you can quickly convince yourselves that this is not for real - renewable energy, in due course, might stop the increase in the amounts of fossil fuel we use but it is not practical for them to meet the global energy demand on their own - certainly not by 2050.

And we have left it too late.  That global warming is an issue has been known for 50 years or more.  Many predictions that science made have come true but governments and business interests have tried their best to confuse the issues.  They claimed that no action was needed and no serious action was, therefore, taken.  Perversely, the intensity of action needed increases as every day goes by and there are few scientists who believe that global warming may be limited to 3C by 2100 even if nations make their best efforts from now.

Climate change control clashes head-on with Sustainability:  Our planet is able to support consumption up to a certain level - we use planetary resources that need to be replenished.  This has not been happening.  In the OECD countries, we delude ourselves by saying that we have controlled energy consumption - it is not going up.  This is dishonest - what we have done is transferred manufacturing to China, India and other developing countries and import finished goods.  Emissions from the manufactured goods elsewhere are due to our consumption - they are our emissions and we are not counting them.  Include these and OECD will be shown not to be doing so well. Net zero by 2050 as UK and EU claim for their targets will be unachievable.

Who will pay and who will make sacrifices?  Rich countries caused the global warming by their extravagant, overconsumption lifestyle over the past 200 years.  Even today, USA consumes more than 2 times energy per capita than China and 8 times more than India, and EU is not far behind.  Standard of living in OECD will have to come down substantially to reduce emissions - will it happen? Definitely not.
The cost of climate mitigation is enormous - there is no extra money in the kitty.  Central banks and poor financial judgements at government level have ensured that most economies are just ticking over - there is no slack and I can't see much enthusiasm for funding climate control measures.

Poor will suffer most, and the rich have the means to do something: 
Look at the projections of the area of the world that will be most severely affected by Climate Change.  They are the poorest areas just now and have little or no political or economic power to do anything significant.  The other group to suffer more will be the poor people in the rich countries - again they will be sidelined by the government policies that will favour the rich (they generally do anyway). Serious migration from poorer countries will happen. The question I would like to ask is whether the poor of the world will be effectively enslaved by the few rich in each country - inequality has been rising and is expected to continue on that trajectory.  With new digital technology, a kind of cyber dystopia appears the most probable outcome over the next 80 years or so.