COP28: We are not speaking the same language on climate targets

Translating that overarching goal into policy, however, requires each country setting its own objectives.

There’s a story thousands of years old about the way communication difficulties can thwart the most ambitious projects.

In the Biblical book of Genesis, the survivors of a global flood gather in the Arabian desert to construct a tower, its bricks mortared with crude oil and its pinnacle scraping the heavens. A jealous God scatters the builders across the planet and destroys their common language, ensuring such hubris will never again bear fruit.

The 198 states attending the United Nations climate conference — hosted this year by an Arab petrostate that’s home to the world’s tallest building — face just such a Tower of Babel in their attempts to hammer out a common agreement.

Science has determined yardsticks to see whether the world is on track to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Emissions in 2030 need to be 21 percent or 43 percent below 2019’s levels to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius or 1.5 C, respectively.

Translating that overarching goal into policy, however, requires each country setting its own objectives to show how it will get there — and just as our populations speak different languages, our political classes have different ideas about what such targets mean. If we can’t bridge that gap of incomprehension, the whole process is at risk.

One of the centerpieces of this year’s summit will be the global stock take: An attempt to assess how nations have performed against the targets set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement, and help inform a new, bolder set of objectives. Preliminary analyses of progress suggest we’re falling well short.

The most consequential gap is the one between the two biggest blocs of emitters — developed nations and China, which each account for about a third of annual greenhouse pollution.

Medium-term targets have a unique role in Beijing’s political culture. Most policy is formed under five-year plans, an overarching series of national objectives fleshed out in hundreds of smaller documents drawn up for individual regions, industries or companies. Officials who fall short of their goals will stall in their careers. As a result, the feedback from lower tiers of the bureaucracy that helps determine the shape of the top-level blueprint is typically risk-averse, to minimise the chance of falling short. China’s economic growth, for instance, has consistently outpaced the numbers laid out in its five-year plans.

Few democratic governments can even count on being in power five years into the future, so the traditional role of targets in such nations is very different. Though politicians are more diligent than you’d think about upholding their pre-election pledges, typically about a third of commitments aren’t kept. “Broken promises” are such a basic part of political rhetoric that voters rarely pay much attention to the record, and assume that failure is the norm rather than the exception. Coupled with that is the idea, common in management studies, that challenging and specific objectives are more likely to be met than those which are modest and vague.

The result is a fundamental failure of comprehension.

Developed countries can decry China’s promise of a 2030 emissions peak as timid and inadequate, especially in the face of evidence that the true peak may come as soon as next year. Why accomplish any more, when Beijing is promising so little?

China, meanwhile, can point to the fact that rich countries are on track to achieve only 11 percentage points of their pledged 36 percent emissions reduction as evidence that their commitments aren’t serious. Why promise more, when developed nations are accomplishing so little?

Take the example of the Netherlands. The lowest-lying country has for several years been held up as a model for unbreakable climate commitments, after the Supreme Court in 2019 found the government was obliged to cut emissions in 2020 by 25 percent relative to 1990 levels. For all the headlines the case attracted, however, it’s unenforceable. The court had no way of compelling politicians to achieve more than the 10 percent cut which actually occurred. The odds of more dramatic reductions have, if anything, lengthened, after elections last week returned the far-right PVV as the largest party in parliament. Its manifesto includes proposals to stop reducing carbon dioxide emissions and putting key climate agreements “through the shredder.”

It’s not impossible to fix this culture clash, but each side needs to lift their game. If developed nations want to be taken seriously by China and extract stronger commitments, they need to show that their own promises have value. Cancelling hundreds of billions in annual subsidies for fossil fuels, which hit a record high last year, would be a good place to start.

Beijing, meanwhile, can afford to be less timid. Its emissions are likely to peak at least five years early, as its economy matures and green electricity and vehicles displace fossil-fired alternatives. Acknowledging that reality and coming up with a reduction target for 2030 would help inform the shape of the next five-year plan starting in 2026.

The fact that every nation on earth has signed on to the Paris Agreement is a sign that common ground exists. A planet at risk of splintering into geopolitical blocs needs to work ever harder to find it.

David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Views do not represent the stand of this publication. 

Credit: Bloomberg