During the two days of the virtual summit, only a handful of governments strengthened their climate ambitions. The USA is one of them, but that doesn’t change anything.
There’s always something happening on Earth Day. Demonstrations, happenings, advertising campaigns: the imagination of those who commemorate the planet we walk on is boundless. The new President of the United States has not failed in this more than fifty-year-old tradition. On April 22, Joe Biden invited some forty heads of state and government. The central theme of this unprecedented summit of climate leaders was the acceleration of decarbonization. Let’s just say that the results were mixed.
Biden sets the bar high
The occupant of the White House had set the bar pretty high. At the start of the event, the federal government announced that it now intends to reduce US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50 to 52% between 2005 and 2030. Until now, the Hyperpower had been planning to cut its carbon emissions by 26-28% over the same period.
The British Prime Minister was a bit of a tease to his host. The day before, Boris Johnson had allowed his administration to say that the UK would cut its carbon emissions by 78% between 1990 and 2035. Better than the European Union, which is not planning to reduce its carbon footprint by more than 55% over the 4 decades in question.
Don’t forget HFCs
What about China? The world’s biggest emitter didn’t say much. President Xi Jinping barely mentioned his intention to ratify the Kigali Protocol. Passed relatively unnoticed, this text aims to ban the production and consumption of hydroflurorocarbons (HFCs): the most powerful Ges we have on our shelves. Beijing has also indicated that it intends to reduce its demand for coal from 2025 onwards.
Also a major coal consumer, South Korea is limiting its ambitions to … exports. Seoul will no longer subsidize its industrialists to export coal-fired power plants.
Japan has long been absent from climate negotiations, but has now moved an ear and promised to strengthen its targets.
A few absentees
The man the climate won’t be thanking is Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil’s president has carbon neutrality in his sights. But by 2050. That’s ten years later than the yellow and green country’s previous climate policy. More surprisingly, the Mexican president is proposing that the United States finance a forest-planting plan in Central American countries, and issue green cards to hardy loggers. As an introduction, Andrés Manuel López Obrador had indicated that he wanted to ban Mexican oil exports. So as to consume all that black gold on the spot.
Nobody expected much from Russia. It did not disappoint. Vladimir Putin proposed nothing new. Except, perhaps, the launch of an initiative on methane, another powerful greenhouse gas. Some observers felt that this could be a call to plug Russia’s very porous gas pipelines.
Rendez-vous aux sommets G
Seven months before the opening – in principle – of the next UN climate summit (Cop 26, to be held in Glasgow), the outcome of Joe Biden’s summit falls short of expectations. The climatologists at Climate Action Tracker estimate that the new pledges offer the prospect of a 12-14% drop in emissions compared with the trajectories of recent national policies. However, if they were kept and extended to 2050, they would still not stabilize global warming at 1.5°C by the end of the century.
Many major emitting countries, such as Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Indonesia, India, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, still have no serious climate strategy. What’s more, the summit clearly failed to address a major issue. ” What was lacking were financial commitments, in particular on adaptation and compensation for loss and damage suffered by the most vulnerable countries”, recalls Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Climate Change.
The subject should be on the agenda of finance ministers at the next G7 and G20 summits, in June and October respectively.
