COP27 Addressing Climate Uncertainties

At the COP27 conference, negotiators must seriously reduce emissions.

FREMONT, CA: The world is aware of what has to be done to combat climate change and maintain the status quo at 1.5 degrees Celsius to avert the worst consequences of warming and must rapidly reduce carbon emissions significantly by 2030, and they must be down by at least 42 per cent from levels in 2019.

Since 2015, when world leaders gathered to sign the Paris Agreement, that has been the goal. As a result, at this time last year, international climate negotiators arrived for the Conference of Parties meeting (COP26) with a specific goal in mind. But at the end of the protracted deliberations, they left Glasgow without fully resolving the carbon arithmetic.

This year's negotiators in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, should be prepared to make more ambitious commitments than they could have in the past. Perhaps their nation has discovered a new method to reduce methane emissions, save a carbon-sucking forest, or pass legislation that funds renewable energy sources. Even then, only a few nations have committed to further reductions, which collectively amount to barely 0.5 of the 13 gigatons of CO₂ that experts estimate must be reduced by 2030 to fulfil the Paris objective.

There are some promising signs. Under the leadership of a new progressive administration, Australia increased its intended reduction to 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Several other nations have already pledged additional cuts or intend to do so shortly, notably Chile, which is attempting to entrench the rights of nature in its constitution. However, most of those revisions come from smaller polluters or countries like Australia that are catching up after presenting appallingly vague or underwhelming objectives. The low-hanging fruit has largely already been harvested.

Other victories have only set emitters on the way to fulfilling their commitments from the previous year. Fransen cites the United States as an example, where the recent Inflation Reduction Act was a significant step toward the country's aim to reduce emissions by 50 per cent from 2005 levels. However, the US still needs to be on course to fulfil that promise. She argues that raising the bar on its targets for this year would strain credibility in light of the country's political impasse.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to estimate how much CO2 humanity produces or to demonstrate that countries are upholding their commitments. This is due to the gas's widespread presence in the atmosphere, which obscures the source of each signal. Further complicating matters are natural processes like permafrost thawing and plant decomposition that release carbon.