Elizabeth May

November 7, 2021

Greetings from Glasgow, home to both some of the friendliest people on the planet and COP26, which may be the weirdest COP ever.

Marching yesterday with 100,000 plus people, in cold, wet, blustery conditions that tested resolve, I was relieved to be outside of the COP. As tens of thousands marched into Glasgow Green, the cheering of young and old, faith leaders, Indigenous peoples from everywhere from the Amazon to the Arctic and scores of cyclists, lifted spirits. There was clarity in the message – far from the mixed messages of COP.

At this writing, we are halfway through the conference, so it could still go either way; produce meaningful progress toward saving the planet prompting the start of the big shift away from fossil fuels or be remembered as the missed opportunity of our last, best hope.

I am not out of sympathy with Greta Thunberg’s denunciation of “greenwashing.” But it is too soon to decide COP26 was a failure. It is not easy or intuitive to understand what’s happening here.

First, the physical weirdness. This is clearly not the worst COP. Copenhagen and COP15 will, one hopes, forever hold that title. But the pandemic has marked this one in critical ways. This is the first big global conference held amid pandemic restrictions. With more than 35,000 registered delegates, COP26 is ten times larger than the 15th COP of the Biodiversity Convention (CBD) that took place last month in Kunming, China.

We are masked. We keep our distance, mostly. The winds blow through the corridors to maintain safe ventilation, which means we are freezing indoors much of the time. We take daily COVID tests before entering the massive conference site – over three hectares of meeting rooms, plenaries, temporary restaurants and coffee shops, and all the trappings of “home” for the climate activists, lobbyists, diplomats, bureaucrats, and journalists calling it that for two weeks.

Meeting rooms have strict occupancy limits, which means that, for the first time in the 12 COPs I have attended, I am not able to access the actual negotiation rooms. I attend daily briefings for members of the Canadian delegation, often attended by Steven Guilbeault, new minister for Environment and Climate Change (where information is shared on a confidential basis and not for attribution).

Another aspect of COP26 weirdness, for which there is no COVID-related explanation, is that it is almost impossible to find electrical outlets – although apparently the media centre is warm and has lots of plugs… I’m jealous.

But at least I am here. Colleagues from around the world have been denied visas. I was planning on dinner Monday night with Rwandan Green Party leader and MP, Dr. Frank Habineza. But the UK government, sending his application to South Africa, could not get his visa to the UK finalized in time for him to come.

The UK government had made a commitment to ensure an equitable COP and to ensure that COVID and other restrictions did not result in fewer participants from Indigenous communities, the Global South, and civil society. This has been a massive “fail.” The developing world is far less well-represented here than at other COPs.

I am not out of sympathy with Greta Thunberg’s denunciation of “greenwashing.” But it is too soon to decide COP26 was a failure. It is not easy or intuitive to understand what’s happening here.

Now to the higher-level weirdness. Why does this COP feel so disconnected from the normal COP process?

Clearly, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a showman. It only dawned on me after all the leaders had left that this COP is deviating from normal COPs in ways that reflect Johnson’s personality. If you read my earlier dispatches, you’ll know I was impressed with Boris Johnson’s climate advocacy, but then he took a private jet back to London for dinner at his club. I am less impressed.

As the host country, the UK is essentially using this COP as a backdrop for self-promotion. The splashy press events are rolled out at dizzying speed. And the days are thematic. Finance day was a big one, with Mark Carney announcing he had identified $130 trillion investor dollars ready and willing to finance a decarbonized world. But are they committed to stop funding fossil fuels? Not so much.

Similarly, that same day, it was announced that over 100 countries had signed on to the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use, supposedly committed to halting deforestation in more than 13 million square miles of forest around the world by 2030. But then Indonesia, one of the signatories, cast doubt on what its commitment could be. Environment Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said on Twitter on Wednesday, “Forcing Indonesia to (reach) zero deforestation in 2030 is clearly inappropriate and unfair.”

Other announcements are entirely positive, at least at fist blush: hugely encouraging commitments to slash methane emissions globally by 30 percent by 2030, with Canada committing to 75 percent reductions; to end the financing of foreign fossil fuel investments, which Canada also adopted; and to increase the pressure for the Powering Past Coal Alliance, launched by Canada and the UK in Bonn at COP24 with 25 more countries signing on.

Still, all of these and many more are not the product of negotiation within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the COP. These are voluntary commitments cobbled together as “alliances.” And, as ever, the headlines tend to over-sell what has been achieved.

For example, countries signing on to the end of foreign fossil fuel funding can still do so, as long as the fossil fuel facility has some form of carbon reduction technology attached. The commitment is to stop foreign funding for “unabated” fossil fuel developments … so with carbon capture and storage (expensive and largely discredited), investments can proceed.

Do these announcements constitute progress? Most likely. They move the world in the right direction. In fact, Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, told the Powering Past Coal plenary that his team’s preliminary calculations of the impact of all the Glasgow announcements, if they are fully honoured, would take the projected global average temperature increase from an estimated 2.7 degrees C, calculated before COP26, to 1.8 degrees. That would be huge – although far short of the Paris goal of 1.5.

Still, the totality of commitments made by governments paints a very different picture. The UNFCCC synthesis report released on Thursday estimated that if all the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC’s – another word for targets) are delivered in full, by 2030 GHG emissions will have increased by 13.7 percent above 2010 levels. The previous synthesis report projected an increase of 16 percent above 2010. Progress? Yes. But overall, it is still disaster. The IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees had made it clear emissions have to drop by 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 to hold to 1.5 degrees.

Another way to measure and stay grounded in science is to look at the carbon budget. This is from a useful website called Climate Clock:

“According to the IPCC’s latest estimate, the remaining carbon budget is 500 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from 2020 onward. We will have emitted close to 80 billion tonnes during 2020-21, leaving 420 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in the budget after 2021.

“The year that we emit the last of this remaining carbon budget is expected to also be the year that global temperatures reach 1.5º C.

“The current emissions trend suggests that this moment is now only 10 years away.”

With so many different ways of measuring progress – against NDCs, against voluntary sectoral, private/public commitments, or by actual GHG emissions, it is possible to claim failure or success depending on which strand one grabs onto.

We could leave COP26 with Boris Johnson claiming victory, the International Energy Agency saying we are closing in on 1.5 degrees, while the UNFCCC calculations mean we will fail to hold to 1.5 with the window on 1.5 closed, and closed forever, by 2030.

In all of this, each one of those proclaiming the “news”, including Greta Thunberg and climate activists, will have some truth in what they say.

The next week will help clarify results from negotiations – a step away from the public relations-fueled announcement machinery. Can we get countries to agree that NDC targets must be boosted on an annual basis – not just every five years? Can we hold faith with the developing world, the low-lying islands states, Indigenous peoples and youth? Those are the people who stay focused on a paramount goal: One point five to stay alive.

I hold to cautious optimism.

Contributing Writer Elizabeth May, MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands, is the former leader of the Green Party of Canada. She is filing for Policy on a regular basis from COP26 in Glasgow.