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https://theconversation.com/cop26-leaves-too-many-loopholes-for-the-fossil-fuel-industry-here-are-5-of-them-171398>
"For the Glasgow climate summit to be judged a success, a key outcome had to be
that parties agree the majority of the world’s fossil fuel reserves need to be
left in the ground.
As recent research suggests, 89% of coal and 59% of gas reserves need to stay
in the ground if there’s to be even a 50% chance of global temperature rise
staying under the crucial limit of 1.5℃ this century.
The summit, COP26, has not lived up to that ambition because there are too many
loopholes for the fossil fuel industry to exploit.
Some promising proposals have been put forward, including the pledge to cut
methane emissions, some increased emissions reductions targets at the national
level, limits to deforestation, and ending some overseas funding of fossil
fuels. Yesterday, 13 countries launched a new alliance to end gas and oil
production within their borders, led by Denmark and Costa Rica.
But most proposals suffer either from a lack of ambition or a lack of
participation from key countries.
Take the pledge to cut methane emissions. Some of the biggest methane emitters
such as Russia, China and Australia failed to sign up. Similarly, the plan to
phase out coal allows some signatories such as Indonesia to keep building
coal-fired power plants.
What these proposals and, indeed, the whole COP process, suffer from is an
inability to address the fact that if we’re to avoid the worst of climate
change, we simply can’t keep extracting fossil fuels.
While national governments and their negotiators remain willing to listen to
the interests of fossil fuel lobbyists, the COP process will continue to be
riddled with loopholes that will derail the achievement of real targets. Five
big loopholes come to mind."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
