COP21 & Climate Adaptation Subcommittee What people don’t write about, when they write about COP 21. An article from the EC trainee subcommittee on the ‘The history of COP meetings’, ‘What is an INDC?’ and ‘Why is COP21 important?’ *Disclaimer on the title: the internet is full of detailed explanations for all of these questions, so this piece is intended to be an alternative to what you’ll find with a quick google search.
As you can expect, the road to COP 21 is paved with good intentions and complexities, and as you have probably heard, the last big COP event in Copenhagen was a failure back in 2009. So what has changed since? What is different for the 190 countries gathering near Paris to hammer out a new international agreement on climate change? For sure a lot has changed. On the technology front renewables have come on breathtakingly. For a start, they’re now cheap. Dramatic cost reduction curves mean that they’re already beating conventional fossil fuels as an energy source in many places around the world. Yet this progression is still agonisingly misunderstood, due in part to some current studies -‐ which have wide readership -‐ making basic mistakes such as using data that is out-‐of date (read the very reputable Amory B. Lovins for a good explanation on this1). Ignoring the glaring central issue of climate change for a second, renewables admittedly had a hard sell at Copenhagen. At the time, celebrities such as Bono -‐ whose most recent well known sales tactic involved forcing his unwanted album into new iPhones -‐ tried to convince the major economies of the world to stop their growth strategies. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t music to their ears. While cheap-‐shots at Bono are to be expected, this time around, the struggle with messaging is troubling the most unexpected of household names. David Attenborough, unrivalled in his ability to articulate the natural world, even appears to be having difficulty with his choice of words on the eve of COP 212.
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Available at: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/flaw-‐and-‐order-‐how-‐brookings-‐got-‐its-‐analysis-‐of-‐wind-‐ and-‐solar-‐costs-‐so-‐wr 2 See: https://www.facebook.com/skynews/videos/1217509771596951/
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COP21 & Climate Adaptation Subcommittee To get an insight into this widespread misconception, we can turn to the second question, ‘What are INDC’s?’ In short, INDC’s are pledges. In UN lingo, they stand for "Intended Nationally Determined Contributions" (INDCs). What they are not, is a big global deal on keeping climate change below 2 degrees. This was the case last time round and it didn’t work. Rather, INDC’s are intended to get countries to individually put forward their most ambitious plans in a structured way, in order to get the ball rolling. It's a subtle difference but an important one. The big names have all put forward proposals. The European Union will cut emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, while China has vowed that its emissions will peak around 2030. or a full list of detailed contributions, see here3. Where’s the misconception? The word “Contribution” is telling. It’s a synonym for ‘donation’, ‘charity’ or ‘offering’4; words hardly incentivising for countries competing economically. It represents the wakeup call to climate changes as a nuisance, ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ as Al Gore coined it before. What has not been understood is that transitioning to a 100% clean economy is an enormous benefit. Again, everyone has seen the cartoons that depict this but very few seem to actually believe it.
And for me, this is ‘Why COP21 is important’. It’s a belated global platform to finally get government leaders to talk about things differently; that it’s not high-‐growth versus no-‐growth and it’s not the west versus the rest. Developing countries now have the chance to leapfrog the developed countries with their energy source. In the same way we don’t expect typewriters to be a modern solution to illiteracy, we shouldn’t expect fossil fuel power plants to be a solution to under development. The misunderstanding, that we’re still missing cost effective technological fix -‐ to what is a policy problem -‐ has led to a situation where what’s politically feasible doesn’t make environmental sense, and what makes environmental sense isn’t politically feasible.
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http://www4.unfccc.int/submissions/INDC/Submission%20Pages/submissions.aspx http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/contributions?s=t
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COP21 & Climate Adaptation Subcommittee This not to say we’re at a deadlock. In fact, we have already overcome global agreements on emissions before. James Lovelock's discovery of CFC’s burning holes in the ozone layer lead to a relatively swift decline to a multi-‐billion dollar global industry. Right now it appears certain that COP in Paris will be retrospectively viewed the same light as Copenhagen. However it’s still the best arena we have to tell a new narrative that convinces people that technology such a wind power are already the cheapest available. Getting the ball rolling on changing our energy use has been a hard push so far, yet it’s becoming increasingly clear that once renewables gain momentum, governments around the world will be playing catch up, vying for technological leadership. While as for fossil fuels, the convenient truth will be to #keepitintheground. Author: Feilim O'Connor
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