FtF News #193 – 13th December 2023

COP28 pulls in world leaders for a soundbite and a photo opportunity, but will there be meaningful agreements struck this year?

The past two weeks in climate news have been dominated, as expected, by COP28. It’s the largest COP ever, with over 100,000 attendees. The conference has been the usual mix of impressive-sounding sentiment and some token agreements, but there’s not a huge amount of significant progress so far – again, very normal for a COP.

The conference has been overshadowed by fossil fuels even more than normal, with COP president Sultan Al Jaber’s role as CEO of the UAE’s state oil firm Adnoc ruffling more than a few feathers. Despite that, somehow we’ve ended up in a position where text on phasing out fossil fuels is on the table for the final agreement. However, with Saudi Arabia blanket ruling out text on a full phase-out, it’ll be a tough ask to broker any kind of agreement. If they do it’ll be historic, but given the COP texts aren’t legally binding, it will be more of a token gesture, though it would definitely signify a shift in global attitudes towards fossil fuels that is both overdue and extremely welcome.

If you spot any stories you’d like to share, you can submit them here.

Wild Weather

Mother nature’s reactions to the ever-warming world

• Heavy rains have been causing chaos across swathes of Eastern Africa, with Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia amongst the nations affected. A rapid attribution study has estimated the rains were made around twice as intense by climate change.

• The WMO has declared 2023 the hottest year ever, as no matter what December brings, the planet has sat at around 1.4°C above pre-industrial levels for the first ten months of the year.

It’s Science!

The latest from in climate research and analysis

• The UN FAO has released its first ever roadmap to keep the global food system under 1.5°C at COP28, which has been hailed as a major milestone for the sector.

• As another COP passes, Carbon Brief has put together an interactive exploration of the many different pathways and scenarios discussed in climate forecasts, allowing people to explore the different ways to keep warming at 1.5°C.

• A new study has re-estimated countries’ historic emissions taking into account colonialism, which nearly doubles the UK’s impact across time, taking it from eighth to fourth, contributing around 5.1% of all emissions ever.

• New research studying hundreds of forests has found that long term, local governance of forests by Indigenous peoples or local communities is key to restoration.

Party Political Broadcast

Climate politics are a special creature indeed

• COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber had a less than ideal start to the conference after a recording surfaced of him saying that there was ‘no science’ behind demands for a fossil fuel phase-out. Of course, that statement was immediately rebuked by the scientific community, but it confirmed many fears about the tone and direction of COP28, which has featured nearly 2,500 fossil fuel lobbyists this year.

• UK PM Rishi Sunak is under fire after a token appearance at the conference, where he both supported a phase-out of fossil fuels (despite promoting them domestically mere weeks ago) whilst also defending his slow-down of UK climate policies. Given that the UK is likely to miss its current Paris Agreement goals by a significant margin, it wasn’t a glowing moment for the UK leader.

• Currently every G20 nation is missing their climate goals, with most rated either ‘critically insufficient’ or ‘highly insufficient’.

• Colombia has joined a small alliance of countries pushing for a treaty to end the use of fossil fuels entirely – it is the tenth country to join, and one of the only ones with an economy that significantly depends upon oil and gas.

• William Ruto continued to stake his claim as Africa’s self-appointed climate leader at COP28, promoting an African investment initiative that has allocated $2.6bn to clean power projects in just three months.

• Outside of the COP28 bubble, UK ministers have been accused of misleading the public after documents have been found showing that they ignored their own officials’ advice when scrapping key air quality regulations.

Money makes the world go around

The machinations of climate finance

• A major early win for COP28 was an agreement on the loss and damage fund. Initial pledges have already been made, but amount to $700m – less than 0.2% of what is needed. The US in particular faced criticism for pledging just $17.5m (and that gated behind Congressional approval), despite strong-arming developing countries into accepting the fund being run by the World Bank for several years.

• Australia has announced that it will end funding for overseas fossil fuel expansion within a year, although its significant domestic spending has yet to come under the axe.

• The Rockefeller Foundation, the largest private foundation in the US, has targeted net zero for its $6bn endowment.

• Kamala Harris made a brief visit to COP28 to announce $3bn in additional funding to the Green Climate Fund. Whilst welcome, the money must be approved by a Republican-controlled House and a third of it covers money promised back in 2014.

Haha, Business!

Climate happenings in the corporate world

• Only one of more than 20 firms sponsoring COP28 this year has signed up to a science-backed net-zero target of any kind.

• Adnoc, the UAE’s state oil company, has plans to ramp up production as much as 42% by 2030 – not a great look for COP28 president Al Jaber, who is also Adnoc’s CEO.

• A Dubai firm called Blue Carbon has been attempting to buy up enormous tracts of African nations for carbon credits, leading to accusations of climate colonialism.

• Virgin Atlantic recently hailed the ‘world’s first sustainable aviation fuel flight’, after flying a Boeing 787 across the Atlantic on fuel derived from used cooking oil. However, analysis has shown that not only is the fuel source not scalable, it’s also not particularly sustainable.

The Future is Electric

EVs and all things electrification

• Paris is to hold a referendum in February on tripling parking tariffs for large SUVs to discourage their use in the city.

Climate Inequity

A hard look at the inequities of the climate crisis

• Malawi is suffering from the worst ever outbreak of cholera ever seen in the country, thanks to the compounding impacts of the multiple storms that struck the region in early 2023. The disease is easily treated, but is known as a disease of poverty and poor infrastructure, with outbreaks linked to major floods in less developed nations.

• Many world leaders chose to fly to COP28 on private jets, including 3 UK leaders or ex-leaders who flew on separate aircraft on the same day.

Speaking truths

Efforts in activism and awareness

• The UK’s ASA is to crack down on adverts using the terms ‘biodegradable’ and ‘recyclable’ after finding many products mislead consumers over their actual impact.

• An activist court case has led to a Belgian court declaring the country’s climate targets ‘clearly insufficient’ – the country will have to increase its 2030 emissions reduction target from 47% versus 1990 levels to at least 55%.

• Greenpeace has taken over a ship conducting research on seabed mining, vowing to stay there until the expedition is stopped.

Long Reads

Interesting deep-dives into climate-related topics

• The Marshall Islands this week announced its climate plan – one of the most thorough such plans ever put together by a tiny island nation. It reveals just how challenging it will be for such countries to evolve as sea levels rise, but also that adaptation is possible, though far from easy or cheap.

• Carbon capture has been on many people’s minds at COP28, but as a look at US efforts in this space shows, the technology is far from the magic wand it might appear, and should be used tactically if at all.

• France has long worked to change public habits around waste, but changing behaviours is slow, incremental work. Different cities are trialling combining behaviour change with more systemic approaches to tackle the problem from both ends.

• The Lower Sioux in Minnesota suffer from the double impact of poor land and a lack of housing, but are planning to tackle this by creating the US’ first vertically integrated hempcrete operation, allowing them to build climate-friendly, high quality housing as well as a new revenue base.