The Daily View: Sanctioning climate change
YOU know how it is these days. Desirable specimens of your gender of choice in various stages of undress routinely send you flirtatious messages on social media, Nigerian princes solicit your kind assistance in unlocking $10m legacies and parcel delivery companies often need your bank details before they can release a package.
And the way Donald Trump sees things; climate change is another addition to the list of hoaxes that routinely plague the modern world.
If that is truly the case, the scammers are doing a damn good job setting up the con trick.
It must be hard work to arrange ever-increasing global temperatures, melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels and multiple extreme weather events as part of a sustained drive to hoodwink the gullible.
But whatever Trump contends on this one, it is difficult to dismiss an annual succession of billion-dollar hurricanes as fake news. Climate change is indisputably happening and represents an obvious immense challenge to the maritime industries.
For shipping, it is already resulting in delays, diversions and cargo losses. Ports will need ever more frequent expensive infrastructure upgrades. Meanwhile, the term “uninsurability crisis” is already a buzzword among underwriters.
On Wednesday, our editor-in-chief Richard Meade unveiled details of the diplomatic pressure exerted by the US to scupper the International Maritime Organization’s agreement on a framework for net zero, which had until this week been expected to go through later this year.
He has followed up with a story unpacking the tactics they intend to use for doing so.
What comes through is the intent not merely to water the deal down to the point of meaninglessness, but to stop it in its tracks. It’s full rejection or nothing, with no compromises brooked.
Countries with influence at Albert Embankment are being diplomatically strong-armed and being told that any support for net zero will count against them when it comes to striking bilateral trade deals.
That is not a threat to be taken lightly, as Narendra Modi has just found out. India has been slapped with a 50% tariff on its exports to the US, with half of that levied as punishment for having to temerity to buy Russian oil.
It remains possible the US plan will be thwarted. But that would require the sudden discovery of a backbone from politicians not widely noted for displays of strength on the vertebral column front.
Shipping contributes around 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If Trump prevails at the IMO, it would be hugely unhelpful to decarbonisation efforts, but not necessarily fatal.
But once he gets his way, an emboldened US won’t stop there. It will go out of its way to undermine all forms of the energy transition.
I started with a note of levity, so let me end on a sombre point. Dealing with climate change is one of the biggest issues facing humanity in our lifetime.
Efforts to limit rising temperatures to 1.5°C, which we have long been told was the maximum sustainable, have already all but been written off. There is no longer any time to waste.
I won’t be around long enough to see the full consequences of global warming play out, but my daughter will be. Future generations will not look back on this week’s developments favourably.
David Osler
Law and marine insurance editor, Lloyd’s List