The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Conference of Parties (COP) have studiously avoided naming fossil fuels as the Primary source of greenhouse gases driving climate change. The United Nations estimates that fossil fuels account for about 75 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions.1
Other sources place the figure at much higher percentages.2 The COPs are a study in retrogression. It has moved from measuring binding emissions reduction to a voluntary system that permits bogus commitments and offers latitudes for inaction, or fictional action as permitted by market environmentalism. With COPs totally co-opted by corporations and banks, Parties continue with business as usual, seeking deals that benefit fossil and related industries rather than tackling a global polycrisis.
The Emissions Gap Report of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) highlights the grim gap between the climate talks, “ambitions,” and reality. The 2022 report shows that if nations carry out the national pledges made since 2021, there will only be a 1 per cent emissions reduction by the end of the century. Starkly, the pledges will only make a “negligible difference” to predicted 2030 emissions.3
The current pledges are placing the world on the path to a 2.8 degrees Celsius temperature rise by the end of the century. This is because the “pledges”, or NDC are mere inventions and tricky mathematical operations and, again, do not tackle the real causes of the global warming.
All these promises are in fact only baselines for the global carbon market and ITMOs business exchanges. Asking for a more “ambitious” pledge is in fact to ask governments to create more and more fairy scenarios and contrafactual futures, that only seeks more possibilities to buy credits by the polluters and arrive to the goal of Net Zero or carbon neutral.
Read the full report here.
