Self-congratulation will dominate COP-22 climate discussions in Marrakech Nov. 7-18 as global elites work to implement the agreement they produced in Paris a year ago.
Signatories remain heady with the historic triumph of having secured national commitments to lower emissions of greenhouse gases.
In Marrakech, they’ll have to hide several problems with their handiwork.
Unable to meet its own goals, for example, the accord will expose the endless escalation of mandated sacrifice central to top-down climate mitigation.
Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a prominent critic of the COP-21 approach, said emission cuts promised for 2016-30 amount to less than 1% of what’s needed to keep global average temperature from exceeding preindustrial levels by more than the 2°C. goal.
“While well-intentioned, this treaty is a hugely expensive way of achieving very little,” declared Lomborg, who advocates increased investment in research.
Painful costs are eroding political support for renewable energy in Europe.
Members of the European Union and the UK are cutting subsidies and dispatch preferences for solar and wind. And less than a week before the start of the Marrakech confab, Germany postponed implementation of its COP-21 commitments amid controversy over economics.
COP-21 has legal problems, too.
Commitments by US President Barack Obama have especially shaky footing.
Knowing Senate ratification was impossible, Obama signed an agreement he claimed not to be a treaty, much as it might resemble one.
This week, 14 senators led by James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) offered clarification.
Obama, they said in a letter to Sec. of State John Kerry, exercised limited authority known as “sole executive agreement” in accepting the Paris accord.
“This form of acquiescence is one of the lowest forms of commitment the United States can make and still be considered a party to an agreement,” they wrote, equating the legal force to that of presidential statements in a speech or press conference.
In Marrakech, speeches and press conferences might be all that really happens.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Nov. 4, 2016; author’s e-mail: [email protected])
Bob Tippee | Editor
Bob Tippee has been chief editor of Oil & Gas Journal since January 1999 and a member of the Journal staff since October 1977. Before joining the magazine, he worked as a reporter at the Tulsa World and served for four years as an officer in the US Air Force. A native of St. Louis, he holds a degree in journalism from the University of Tulsa.