A necessary and unavoidable but constructive failure

The UN’s Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP 26) ended yesterday with a lengthy, consensus declaration. The Glasgow Climate Pact includes something for just about everyone and not enough for anyone. That’s what you expect from a consensus document purporting to represent the views of 197 countries that are collectively fouling the global commons. Nor is it surprising that the current commitments of the parties, despite significant strengthening before and during the conference, will not achieve the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade.

The implications are dire. At higher temperatures than that goal, global warming will raise sea levels enough to drown some island countries and deprive many others of their current coastlines, generate even more dramatic storms and forest fires than we are already seeing, shift agricultural patterns in ways that hinder growing enough to meet global demand, and make parts of the planet even more uninhabitable than they already are. The costs will be astronomical. The human implications tragic. There is nothing to celebrate about COP 26 if you are looking only at the physical implications of what was decided in Glasgow, even if you welcome the substantial agreements reached on methane and deforestation.

The conference was however a success in another sense: without it, things would have been worse. Glasgow upped the ante on climate change. No government on earth can now ignore it entirely. Even laggards like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and India have been announcing new goals and counter measures. President Biden has put climate change high on his agenda, reversing President Trump’s foolish and counterproductive effort to ignore it. Island nations whose physical existence is threatened had their voices magnified. Less developed countries had their needs acknowledged, if not yet fully funded. None of this is enough, but much of it would not have happened without Glasgow.

This is typical of large international conferences. The UN is doing what it can and should. Such conferences serve to mobilize public opinion and shift attitudes, even if they fail to solve the problems they aim to solve. The key now is to maintain the momentum and raise the political pressure. The parties have agreed to meet again next year in Egypt, where no doubt the appeals for action and money will be heightened. Expanding economies in what we can hope will be the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic will likely make the prospects for meeting the goal of 1.5 degrees centigrade even dimmer than they are today. Don’t expect good news, but next year’s conference will again be a necessary, unavoidable but constructive failure.

That’s how the international system works. Get used to it. This is going to go on for decades.