Opinion: Max Boykoff: To create a better future for everyone, we must step up response to climate change - Boulder Daily Camera
Opinion: To create a better future for everyone, we must step up response to climate change
By Max Boykoff
Earlier this month, I attended the United Nations Conference of Parties (COP28) climate summit. With the University of Colorado delegation, I observed ongoing climate negotiations and participated in several side event panels, briefings and other activities.
If you followed news from the summit, I imagine you found both reasons for pessimism and hope. Among the high points, there was:
• a move to explicitly “transition away from fossil fuels,” the main driver of climate change;
• a statement to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030;
• a set of pledges to a “Loss and Damage Fund” to help financially cope with losses in economic terms (such as property and livelihood damage), and non-economic terms (including loss of biodiversity and cultural heritage);
• a commitment to “put the protection and restoration of wild ecosystems at the heart of climate policy,” recognizing interconnections with biodiversity loss, land and water degradation and other global challenges;
• a promise to cut global methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030.
Yes, getting 198 UN parties — with at times vastly different cultural, political, societal, economic, environmental conditions and priorities — to agree to critical actions like these are accomplishments. But these are actually minimum requirements for global action. Against a backdrop of the warmest year (2023) in about 150 years of recorded history and the highest carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere in the last 14 million years, these are urgently needed measures to help avert the worst impacts of a changing climate.
Moving forward, commitments must continue to scale up ambitious implementation timelines. There must be detailed mandates on how decarbonization efforts are deployed, with greater transparency and accountability, and when we will break our reliance on fossil fuels (also called a “phase out”).
Moreover, funding and finance are the critical centerpieces of the next UN COP meetings: while trillions of dollars of investments are needed, promises have been made so far in the millions and billions. Without significant levels of financial support for just and equitable transitions, these statements still lack real-world meaning and impact.
Going forward, we must also improve our understanding of vague language like what “transition” means, step by step. Moving into 2024, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will continue to sell crude oil; India will continue to burn coal; Russia will continue to extract and export natural gas, and so on. While these can and should be addressed within UN institutions, they must also effectively be pursued at regional, national and subnational levels.
Take the U.S., for example: The world’s largest and most powerful economy and second-largest emitter of climate-warming gases, is at a crossroads. With these Dubai agreements in place, how can the U.S. rationalize oil and gas drilling on federal lands? And how can the U.S. continue with the development of liquid natural gas (LNG) export terminals? Aligning with UN COP28 Dubai language of “transition” from fossil fuels to renewables for energy generation (a process called “decarbonization”), it is now more difficult to make the case for these actions. These newfound inconsistencies are further intensified by decarbonization demands from 2022 Inflation Reduction Act commitments.
Yet, we carry on through the contradictions. While it is ideal to align our values and actions in every aspect of our lives (after all, I didn’t ride my bicycle to COP28), it is difficult to overstate how important it is that we all keep perspective when naming, shaming and blaming for emissions. While everything counts, institutional and multinational efforts to wean collective society from fossil fuels are much more influential than individual emissions reduction efforts.
Nonetheless, many in leadership roles often turn this logic on its head, instead spotlighting consumers as culprits of inaction. For example, earlier this month Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber — president of COP28 and CEO of one of the largest oil companies in the world (ADNOC) — performed a variation of this refrain when commenting, “The world continues to need low-cost oil and gas. When the demand stops, that’s a completely different story.”
The trek to decarbonization from Dubai and beyond contains many enduring questions. Among them, do our responses to date meet the scale of challenges associated with 21st-century climate change? No. Can we create better futures for everyone? Yes, and we must.
Max Boykoff is a professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at CU Boulder. Boykoff is also a member of the Camera’s Community Editorial Board.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate economics
Climate change is now a driver of the world’s economy. The impact is profound:
- Catastrophic weather events — hurricanes, floods, droughts, high temperatures — are more frequent and more extreme. The cost can be measured in both the initial damage caused and the longer-term impact on the economy.
- Vulnerable communities are increasing climate-related investments, hardening infrastructure and taking other protective measures.
- Investment in carbon capture and storage technologies is increasingly rapidly.
- Governments are making investments and crafting regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
On top of all of this is the cost of uncertainty. As the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, says, “The assumption that current and future climate conditions will resemble the recent past is no longer valid.”