–Some progress made overnight .. see draft docs below (you can’t trade on draft docs — draft docs provide no futures markets)
Reporting and opinion by Mathew Carr
June 12, 2024 — The handsome, brown-skinned envoy thrust the white, three-inch, cylindrical mobile battery backup-charger at me … coming up with a thoughtful analogy that demonstrates how lacking in humanity rich countries are … as they fake-negotiate climate action.
Rich country negotiators treat these talks like they treat their bids to control all commodities.
Their stance is basically this: We have all the money. We can choose where to put it. If you want us to put it with you for your carbon credits, you have to give us a stupid-low price. You have no negotiation leverage so please don’t pretend that you have.
It’s like forcing someone to buy the phone-battery recharger at $2 even though a sensible price would be $10, or above.
I was standing outside the “Nairobi” room in Bonn, Germany, where negotiations to limit emissions using new UN carbon markets were being held Tuesday afternoon.
These markets were meant to provide billions of euros, or even trillions, of funding for emerging nations in the past four years, so they could leapfrog the OECD nations and adopt clean economies. They were also meant to provide 100s of billions of euros of finance for adaptation, said a second envoy in our huddle.
The first envoy said that poorer nations are apparently being invited to UN talks in a bid to make a corrupt process look more credible in the eyes of the world. There are simply no genuine negotiations, he said.
“It’s ‘talk, talk, talk’ and no ‘do’,” he muttered, apparently frustrated and deceived. Rich countries can claim we were here when these non-decisions are made, so the agreed texts look more democratic than they actually are.
I surveyed more than 10 envoys Tuesday and will continue later Wednesday and Thursday. I’m taking what they envoys told me at face value. They were not keen to speak publicly either … because they are not authorized and/or they fear retaliation…including via the system that awards visas to attend the talks.
One rich-nation guy said that even though UN carbon market decisions were lauded at Paris in 2015 and at Glasgow in 2021 … now, in 2024 … countries can’t really agree on what was meant by the agreements made back then.
Slippery and fragile
It’s so frustrating because that means the negotiations can’t really proceed…because the foundations of the process are so slippery and fragile.
Some progress was made overnight, with documents published this morning (Wednesday). See below.
A push toward nationalism globally has made countries wary of letting government energy and development rules be strong at UN level, even though without global agreement some countries are apparently willing to go it alone and continue destroying the climate and nature. The US continues to expand in oil and natgas. China and India are still building coal generation.
That’s occurring even when cleaner alternatives are now available and cheaper.
Clearly they are cheaper if you take climate-damage costs into account. What’s surprising is …the record global GHG emissions are worsening even though clean energy is now in 2024 cheaper at the flat-competition level.
It’s sheer reckless greed, you see … because the 0.1% of people globally with the ability to change the market structure are the same people making trillions in profit from the current corrupt system. And some of them are overseeing the UN climate process.
Rich country environmental lobbyists are also to blame. They are skeptical that markets should even be allowed to become a key climate solution at all. They regard markets as too corrupt instead of trying to change market rules.
So it’s difficult to blame just the 0.1% and the politicians.
Further, the mainstream press are so captured by the corporations, they are not pushing for a change in the market rules, either.
Further, there is deep structural problem with the talks, ever since they were forced down the path of complete-consensus policy making. It’s almost impossible to make 200 nations agree, even when global temperatures are rising at rate never before seen in modern history.
People can already make money by cutting emissions, because clean energy is gradually replacing fossil fuels — but not at the pace required to save the climate.
And some countries are still expanding in oil, gas and coal — basically because it is what they know and those who control those industries and those financing it are also influential over global market structure.
It’s near impossible to shift the dial.
Speaking with another 10 or so climate envoys Wednesday …I did find a few slivers of hope.
A. One envoy said adaptation finance was now rising quicky, though from a very low base, and could hit $40 billion next year.
Devex snip from April:
The financing need for adaptation to climate change in low- and middle-income countries is at least 50% higher than previously estimated. To plug that gap, climate-vulnerable countries are calling for more easily accessible public financing and more investment from the private sector.
The adaptation finance needs of vulnerable countries now stand at $194 billion to $366 billion per year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme’s latest Adaptation Gap Report.
Yet between 2016 and 2021, adaptation finance averaged $19 billion per year, or just 25% of overall climate finance, according to a 2023 report on adaptation finance from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Another finance-related envoy said she was “not hopeful” about the outlook; one session at the talks apparently heard the private sector was not interested in financing adaptation because it can’t make money out of it; adaptation needs could quickly reach $2 trillion per year.
Water treatment, toll roads (infrastructure) and nature-based solutions/carbon credits may provide some adaptation resilience, said another envoy, disagreeing. Nestle the food giant is expected to speak about its adaptation resilience on Thursday.
B. I did find one envoy who said the Article 6 documents published Wednesday (below) could bring some hope for a new global carbon market that actually operates as soon as next year. When I pressed her on whether there was more than a 50% chance of that happening or less, she declined to comment.
And right there you have yet another reason for the talks’ inability to advance at the required pace: Its secretive nature.
While people are unable or unwilling to speak frankly and publicly, it’s no wonder the mainstream press reports on climate dangers and bad market structure are so ill informed.
Real leadership is sorely lacking, said Alden Mayer, senior associate at E3G. The human species is flawed and short termist, he told me.
They care more about ice cream than climate finance…and probably are set to spend more money on it — if they can get it in their mouths before it melts.
(More to come)
Notes:
Earlier Wednesday, I asked the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change if it would like to comment on my survey.
Here is what I asked at 7:50am (as of 10:14am I had not received a response). I will put it here when/if I do:
Simon Stiell – transparent when it suits him
[…] How the United Nations climate negotiations became all talk and no action (1) […]