international conferences doomed to fail

• Theme 1: glasgow cop 26

  • glasgow climate pact endorsed by nearly 200 countries and presents a set of principles and goals for action on climate change - serves as a lever for international political pressure
  • UN climate negotiators called to draw down use of fossil fuels
  • more than 130 countries said they will zero out their impact on climate change in the next half century
  • india announced target of netzero emissions by 2070
  • world three largest greenhouse gas emitters - china, india, US, accounting for nearly half of global emissions aiming to stop contributing to climate change
• Theme 1: counters

  • Great powers have economic priorities
  • obama campaigned for president on boosting US fossil fuel production, presided over a massive increase in US fossil fuel extraction, lifted a ban on crude oil exports, and licensed the US's first natural gas export
  • ahead of COP26, biden reached out to the organisation of the petroleum exporting countries to ask them to boost oil production
  • he asked saudi to boost production to deal with world oil crisis -> a group of environemtnal groups and think tanks put out a report during the cop26 highlighting how the US, Norway and australia are still subsidising and expanding fossil fuel production -> a big international meeting of 196 parties with their own prejudices, political constraint, rivalries and economic interests is a terrible venue for tackline urgent crisis like climate change
• Theme 2: paris 2015

  • paris climate conference - 195 countries adopted the first ever universal, legally binding global climate deal
  • limit global warming to well below 2 degrees celsius
  • top three super polluters (china, indian US) signed this agreement
  • idea that common land, historically, could be subject to over-grazing because each herder was able to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons
  • each herder is thinking of their self interest and act as 'free riders' to get the maximum benefit
  • sooner or later this would lead to tragedy as the number of cattle came to exceed the 'carrying capacity' of the land
• Theme 2: counter

  • introduction of NDC's has rendered this useless
  • it's likely that states will prioritise their own economic interests above environmental concerns
  • e.g russia - a major carbon and gas producer signed up to paris, their implemented actions against climate change have been little to none
  • eco-socialists argue capitalism can never be reformed to accommodate such targets for environmental improvement and the desire for profit will always trump this
  • most pledges aim at reducing emissions by 2030 but it has been claimed that effects of climate change will be irreversible by 2027
• Theme 3: previous conferences

  • kyoto agreement highly criticised as the US (world major polluter) rejected the treaty
  • brazil, china, india and south africa were declared entirely exempt - china hen overtook the US as worlds main polluter
  • under kyoto industrialised nations pledged to cut their yearly emissions of carbon (29% cut in the values would have occured)
  • nearly all developed nations ratified the treaty
• Theme 3 against previous conferences: the protocol didnt become international law until moret han halfwat through thr 1997-2012 period - by that point , global emissions had risen substantially -> the two biggest emitters of all -> US and china churned out more than enough extra greenhouse gases to erase all the reductions made by other countries during the Kyoto period -> by 2009 emissions soared by 40% and 53% by 2012 -> the target of kyoto was a decrease by 5%