Republished with Permission
Peter Williams
Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality check.radio three days a week.
There have now been 29 Conferences of the Parties or COPs to try and come to some agreement about what the nations of the world should do about climate change – that’s if they can actually do anything.
Doesn’t that tell you the exercise has been pretty much a waste of time since COP one at Berlin in 1995.
The latest incarnation in oil-rich Azerbaijan has been farcical. Essentially the story is this – poor nations believe the rich nations of the world should pay them a trillion dollars a year, that’s one thousand billion dollars annually, by 2035 to help them mitigate the impact of a changing climate.
It’s laughable, but some seriously cheeky delegates in Baku over the last few days have become mightily upset when those with the money told those who don’t to get stuffed.
Walkouts, protests and last minute negotiations that lasted through the night finally allowed the COP to agree on a compromise of a mere $300 billion per year.
But here’s the rub. The world’s largest emitter is China. It’s responsible for 30 per cent of the planet’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and for 90 per cent of the increase in CO2 emissions in the last 10 years.
So with that you’d expect China to pony up the largest chunk of the $300 billion. Like maybe 30 per cent of it?
Nah.
COP 29’s agreement allows China’s contributions to remain “voluntary”.
That’s because the often bizarre but always gutless United Nations still classes China as a “developing” nation, despite it having 17.86 per cent of the world’s GDP to be the second largest economy on the planet behind the USA’s 25.32 per cent.
So while China gets away with paying as much as it wants, which is most likely to be sweet Fanny Adams, New Zealand is expected to put its hands in its pockets to make a contribution to this sham.
As we produce 0.17 per cent of the world’s GHGs, perhaps 0.17 per cent of $300 billion might be a fair contribution? But that’s still a ridiculous $510 million annually.
What we actually pay now is a bit of a mystery. Between 2022 and next year we’ve agreed to pay $1.3 billion to developing nations.
But as well, we have a commitment under the infamous Paris Agreement to spend up to $30 billion between now and 2030 to buy carbon credits because we won’t be able to reduce our GHGs to 2005 levels by that year.
Don’t you get the feeling we’re just pissing money down the drain? Money that we don’t have anyway.
Here’s another thing. Oxfam reported last month that $41 billion in World Bank climate finance is unaccounted for due to poor record keeping. Oxfam say there is no clear public record showing where the money went, how it was used and whether or not it had any impact.
So why should any rich developed nation pay money to poorer developing nations? In UN speak it’s the Global North paying the Global South, except that us muggins, who are about as far south as you can come and live comfortably, are expected to pay up.
As for the COP itself, there were 66,778 delegates registered to attend. Obviously Baku is not the attraction Dubai was last year because the number of attendees dropped from the monstrous 83,000 that rocked up in the Emirates 12 months ago.
New Zealand’s official delegation was 18 people. They included the Minister for Climate Change Simon Watts and the country’s chief negotiator on these matters, Todd Croad, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
But to this modest number add what are known as the “overflow” participants. New Zealand had 74 of them taking the total New Zealand delegation to 92 participants.
Among the overflow were Labour MP Rachel Brooking, Greens co-leader Chloe Swarbrick and – drum roll please – the man she replaced: James Shaw! To be fair he was there representing his new company Morrison, but who paid the air fares so he could discharge a few more tonnes of aviation induced CO2 en route to Baku?
But wait, there’s more. An Excel spreadsheet of every registered delegate is accessible through carbonbrief.org.
Without looking through more than 66 thousand names, it didn’t take long to find under non-governmental organisations a New Zealand youth delegation which comprised indigenous advisers – and an interpreter.
So all up it looks like there were about a hundred New Zealanders there.
That pales in comparison with the host nation (2229), Brazil (1914) and Turkey (1862).
Oh, and let’s not forget the Taliban who were invited to be “observers”. Apparently they now want a cut of the action from the Global North so they can invest in programmes to improve the rights of women and children.
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
So what did COP 29 achieve?
As with the previous 28 COPs, not much. The attempted extortion from smaller nations basically failed. That’s not to say places like the Marshall Islands and Samoa won’t be back in a year’s time asking for the same – or more.
But by then Donald Trump will be in the White House and the US will likely be out of the Paris Accord.
Therefore the US won’t be paying. China may make a cursory contribution but nothing more because it’s still a “developing” nation.
FFS. Makes you wonder why we bother.
Oh, and the International Energy Agency says that next year a record 103.8 barrels of oil will be consumed around the globe very day. The IEA also tells us that gas production was up three per cent in the first half of this year and coal use increased 3.1 per cent last year to reach an all time high.
Nothing’s changing.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
