- Emergency: The Paris Agreement is insufficient to curb climate change
"Ambition, ambition and ambition". It is the pressing message with which the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, hopes to receive on Monday the representatives of 200 countries that will attend the Climate Summit in Madrid. Emissions continue to increase globally, national commitments are insufficient and we are moving towards a temperature increase of 3.2 degrees if the current trend persists , with more droughts, more fires, more floods and more episodes of extreme weather.
"We fail collectively at the time of acting and now we are forced to a deep cut in emissions, of the order of 7% annually , if we want to stabilize the situation in the next decade," warns Inger Andersen, director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP). "Countries cannot wait until 2020. They have to start now to recover all the lost time. If we do not, the objective of a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees by 2030 may be beyond our reach."
The COP25 will therefore serve to spur governments to step on the accelerator, thoroughly review the contributions determined at the national level (NDC) and boost the goal of a zero-emission planet in 2050 . All this in a different political and social background to that of the conference that paved the way for the Paris Agreement. The wave of climate activism will free a pulse with populism in the streets of Madrid in 13 days that will make history.
The social and political context
Something has changed radically in the last year: climate activism has gone around the world. Movements such as Fridays for Future (Youth for the climate, in Spanish) driven by Greta Thunberg, or Extinction Rebellion , which emerged in the United Kingdom, have raised social pressure on the political class. And all despite the wave of populism led by Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, which have served to give wings to denialism and try to force a reverse. At the Paris Summit, the black beast was Saudi Arabia; in Madrid they are expected to be Brazil (with the Amazon as a hot spot) and the United States (with the counterpoint of California and the big cities).
From Santiago to Madrid
Social unrest and police repression forced the withdrawal of Chile and the offer of the Spanish Government to host the COP25 in Madrid. The South American country maintains, however, the presidency and is co-host, along with Spain. It is the second time that two countries share the organization of a climate summit: Fiji hosted COP23, which was held in Bonn (Germany) due to the lack of infrastructure in its capital, Suva.
The blue turn
The oceans, which absorb up to 80% of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere , have so far been the large marginalized in the climate debate. The recent IPCC report - alerting on the acidification of water, the disappearance of ice, the erosion of the coasts and the possible increase in sea level from 30 to 60 centimeters in the 21st century - has recalled the urgency of the issue. The Chilean Minister of the Environment, Carolina Schmidt, announced her intention to give the summit a blue twist because of the eminently maritime nature of the organizing country. "Hopefully COP25 will continue to focus on the oceans despite the change of headquarters," warns Rémi Parmentier, coordinator of the Because the Ocean initiative, which hosts 30 countries (including Chile and Spain). Acting Ecological Transition Minister of Spain, Teresa Ribera, has pledged to collect the witness.
Zero emissions in 2050
Adherence to carbon neutrality plans by 2050 will be one of the priorities of COP25. The Alliance for Climate Ambition, led by Chile and the UN, set the goal of zero net carbon emissions by the middle of the century and already has 67 member countries (including Spain) , a hundred cities and 87 large companies . The hosts hope to double the number of accessions during the Madrid summit, but the task will not be easy. In the EU, without going any further, a group of resistance to the objective has already emerged, led by Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The Brown to Green report also marks the transition path towards a decarbonised economy in the G20 countries, responsible for 78% of emissions.
1.5 degrees
At the 2015 Paris summit, 195 countries pledged to take concrete actions to "keep the global average temperature rise well below 2 degrees from pre-industrial levels, and continue efforts to limit that temperature rise. at 1.5 degrees. " At the Madrid summit, the focus will be on the objective of 1.5 degrees, in the light of the new scientific evidence and the pressure of the countries most affected by climate change, for which the difference of half a degree is equivalent Simply to survival . However, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran have already objected that the seminal report of the 1.5 degrees of the IPCC can even be debated in political negotiations. According to UN projections, if the current emissions trend of the planet continues, it will heat 1.5 degrees between 2030 and 2052.
Charcoal
2019 will be the year that records the biggest drop in coal power generation in history, according to a recent analysis by the British website Carbon Brief. The United Kingdom has celebrated the milestone of the first week without coal since the Industrial Revolution this year. The closure of coal mines in Spain is also considered a substantial advance. In Eastern Europe, however, a strong dependence on coal persists, whose use has also increased in Germany following the decision to close the nuclear power plants . For its part, China has gained 43 gigawatts of capacity in new coal-fired power plants in the last two years. Despite the worldwide leadership in almost all renewable sources, the Asian giant is still betting on the dirtiest energy to supply the high demand of its population, a dilemma that India also faces and that this year has manifested itself with special crudeness in the very high pollution recorded in the Asian megacities.
The oil
The estimated oil, gas and coal production by 2030 is double that what can be burned if you want to limit the global rise in temperatures to 1.5 degrees. It is the warning issued by UNEP in its recent report, which establishes a very direct link between production and emissions, and puts the finger on the sore about the need to "divest" in fossil fuels . What began as an environmental claim, led at the Paris summit by 350.org founder Bill McKibben, has already become an economic imperative. "Renewables are already more competitive and it makes no sense to invest in oil or coal in this other model we are creating," says Nicholas Stern, author of the historical report on the economy and climate change.
Mitigation and Compensation
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement empowers the parties (states) to use market mechanisms to offset their emissions. The role of carbon markets , and to what extent they can make a positive contribution to global efforts, will be one of the hot potatoes at COP25. The increasing costs of losses and damages caused by episodes of extreme weather will also be very present on the agenda. The most vulnerable countries demand that the specific UN agency - known as the Warsaw International Mechanism - have direct access to financial support in order to achieve direct economic compensation .
Acceleration
The first step in reaching the goal of zero emissions in 2050 is to reduce them by half in 2030. The Exponential Roadmap group, made up of dozens of scientists, analysts and economists, has marked the way with a road map on pressing changes and necessary in the next decade. Electric vehicles should constitute 90% of the fleet on that date. Cities should undergo a profound transformation to improve mobility and air quality. Meat consumption should be significantly reduced in our diets. The slowdown to deforestation and the in-depth review of agricultural subsidies is another pressing task. "We are facing a large-scale transformation that is already underway, but we have to gain speed and make the transition for a decade," says Johan Rockström, director of the Postdam Institute for Climate Change Impact Research.
Glasgow 2020
Madrid will pave the way to the COP26 in Glasgow in 2020, the final moment of accountability. The British Government will outline its plans at COP26, although the eternal distraction of Brexit and the campaign for the 12D elections will impede the necessary momentum. Premier Boris Johnson has just reiterated his commitment to set the goal of zero emissions in 2050 and not follow Donald Trump's slippery path. Johnson has just ordered the temporary suspension of fracking for slate gas extraction, something Obama did not dare in his day. The United Kingdom is a world leader in offshore wind and has set out to remove coal from the energy pie before a decade. Glasgow's motto was to be the COP of ambition , but Madrid has snatched the message because time is running.
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