Strong stomachs required for climate waters

The best way to describe the Glasgow climate outcome is haggis, a Scottish dish of minced offal stuffed into a dead sheep’s stomach, not to everybody’s taste.

President Alok Sharma receives applause after giving the closing speech as he attends the Closing Plenary of the COP26 Climate Summit over the weekend. Picture: Getty Images

The best way to describe the Glasgow climate outcome is haggis, a Scottish dish of minced offal stuffed into a dead sheep’s stomach, not to everybody’s taste.

Climate groups are putting on a brave face, gearing up to leverage the minor wins achieved. These include finalisation of the rule book for international carbon trading and inclusion of the words coal and fossil fuel subsidies in the formal text. Developing nations have been left furious at the outcome, which saw demands for money for loss and damage effectively shoved aside.

This means that developed countries are in for a fiery ride at COP27 when the climate caravan moves next year back to African soil in Egypt. India, China and Africa have sent a clear signal they will seek $US1.3 trillion a year from 2030, dwarfing the $US100m a year that was supposed to start in 2020 but has yet to be delivered.

On a checklist of expectations set out by Boris Johnson ahead of the summit, to end the use of coal and change the Paris agreement target to 1.5C, Glasgow failed to deliver.

Having compared the task of leaders to that of James Bond at the start of the Glasgow talks, Johnson’s ambitions went the way of Daniel Craig in No Time To Die. Spoiler alert, it did not end well. The starburst of incoming missiles finally arrived at 7.41pm UK time on Saturday.

In what is now a hallmark of UNFCCC talks, negotiations went overtime and ended in a frantic bargain between the US, China and India. India, which does not consider itself responsible for the situation the world now finds itself in, offered a reluctant compromise that kept coal alive.

Australia can expect to remain a key focus of discontent by green groups. The Morrison government was singled out for humiliation as the COP’s “colossal fossil” as talks ran into overtime, highlighting the detachment of campaigners from the reality of the numbers.

Achieving a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C requires a reduction in total global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2010 level and to net zero around mid century.

The uncomfortable truth is that pledges from all nations, even if they are met, will result in an increase of 13.7 per cent – a figure many times Australia’s total emissions.

But Australia is being held up as a holdout for not revising its 2030 target ahead of the time it is legally required to do so under the Paris Agreement.

All countries are now under constant pressure to do more.

But the world remains far away from meeting its targets and light years away from satisfying the demands being made for compensation to developing nations.

The onus really is on the corporate world to deliver the solutions to both of these problems. Carbon capture and use or storage (CCUS) and direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere are both still in the COP26 agreement and on the table.

Australia is making a big bet that hydrogen will come down in cost to replace fossil fuels.

It is fair to assume the set against coal will continue and there is big opportunity in mining the minerals needed for batteries and technologies of the future.

But as Glasgow has demonstrated, these are treacherous waters, suitable only for those with a strong stomach.