Madrid Climate Conference Ends in Failure
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2019/12/16/madrid_climate_conference_ends_in_failure_110499.htmlDecember 16, 2019
Al Gore Talks—Donald Trump Vindicated
#TimeForAction was the slogan at this year’s Madrid climate conference that ended Sunday. #TimeForTalk would be more accurate. The talking was endless: more than 70,000 hours were spent failing to define a “market instrument,†something that was meant to have been decided at last year’s conference in Katowice, Poland. Even though the Madrid conference ran over into the weekend, making it the longest ever, the issue will be kicked into next year’s talks, in Glasgow, Scotland.
“I am disappointed,†United Nations secretary general António Guterres tweeted. He should be. Next year, countries are to submit their second set of five-year, nationally determined climate plans under the Paris Agreement. The Madrid conference was to have engendered a spirit of enhanced climate ambition, a kind of competition of climate virtuousness. All it could manage was a statement expressing “serious concern†about the widening gap between the participating parties’ collective efforts and the ambitious emissions trajectory required to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius.
Talk doesn’t cut greenhouse-gas emissions. The UN Environment Programme describes the last ten years as a lost decade, in terms of curbing global emissions. “There has been no real change in the global emissions pathway in the last decade,†UNEP says. Global emissions have risen at an average of 1.5% a year over the last ten years, pausing in 2016 but resuming the upward trend in 2017. Emissions have now reached a new record, with no sign yet of a peak. The underlying driver is the strong economic growth of non-OECD economies, which have grown at more than 4.5% a year, compared with only 2% a year for OECD members....
