This week has seen Bitcoin break its all-time high with its price settling at around $68,500. $70,000 is lurking around the corner and appears to be a question of when at this point as all eyes are set on the magic number 100. Will we be seeing that before the year runs out? Ticktock.
Meanwhile in Scotland, hundreds of thousands of people have been protesting over COP26, the climate summit which has seen leaders around the world gather to discuss plans to mitigate the worrying effects of climate change by keeping warming at under 1.5°C.
The cause of the protests? Well, as Greta Thunberg, the child climate activist describes it, COP26 ‘has been a failure’. This is coming while the summit is in its final week and with world leaders making promises and commitments to combat the malignant crisis. As in Madrid two years before, there is a sense that it may all be talk with no corresponding action.
To start with, leaders of two major energy consuming nations in the world, Russia and China, are conspicuously absent—which has led America’s president, Joe Biden, to lambast the two countries as failing to lead.
For China’s Xi Jinping, his absence was not much of a surprise as he hasn’t set foot outside China in almost two years. Ostensibly the reason is the COVID-19 pandemic however, there are suggestions it may be in a bid to consolidate his grip on China which is of more importance to him than any conference.
His Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, may likely see the whole summit as a giant charade. For all the talk of lowering gas emissions it remains difficult to see the feasibility in these plans as of yet especially as Russia already announced the completion of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline which would effectively boost gas flows towards Germany and bypass Ukraine—leading to a potential conflict as the pipeline once approved by German regulators would hamper Ukraine’s revenues from gas severely.
There are also ethical concerns bordering on social injustice. A major argument advanced by developing countries such as in Africa which emits the least—just about three per cent of global emissions—is that they suffer the adverse effects of the negative carbon footprint left by the West while still being asked to cut down on industrialisation, the same process through which developed nations achieved their current economic status.
President Buhari, for all his flaws, makes an important point when he argues in this opinion piece that climate crisis will not be fixed by creating an energy crisis in Africa. (Whether the piece was truly written by him is another matter altogether)
Although Buhari has committed Nigeria to having net zero emissions by 2060, skeptics may argue that such lofty goals are at odds with lived realities. For one, Nigeria still relies heavily on crude oil earnings with plans in place by the Buhari-led administration to get its oil refineries privatised and working at optimum capacity.
Still on the subject matter of words at dissonance with actions, let's revisit China. Like Buhari, Jinping also promised to keep China carbon-neutral by 2060. However, it has been building coal plants at an unprecedented speed making a mockery of plans to scale back on coal production globally. A report by the Global Energy Monitor noted the following:
China commissioned 38.4 GW of new coal plants in 2020, over three times the 11.9 GW commissioned in the rest of the world.
Chinaʼs coal fleet grew by net 29.8 GW in 2020, while in the rest of the world net capacity decreased by 17.2 GW.
China now has 247 GW of coal power under development (88.1 GW under construction and 158.7 GW proposed for construction) – a 21% increase over end-2019 (205 GW), and nearly six times Germanyʼs entire coal-fired capacity (42.5 GW).
Do as I say, not as I do.
Rising crude prices suggest that any talk of a shift towards renewable energy soon may be optimistic at best as demand remains high. The US particularly is facing demand pressures as OPEC has refused to accede to Biden's request to increase production to stem the surging price of gasoline.
There’s also the question of continuity with regards to America's foreign policy. We saw for example how Trump discarded Obama's Iran nuclear deal. Still under Trump, the US officially pulled out of the Paris Agreement, undoing years of work. With these precedents set, what's to say that a future Republican president doesn’t renege on any current climate commitments?
To highlight the divergence between the goals of the climate summit and actual projections, a recent report by the Climate Action Tracker has provided a rather grim outlook noting that the world is nowhere near its goals of limiting global temperature rise having calculated that earth is heading for 2.4C of warming—more than the 1.5C target.
While technological advances have seen the cost of installing renewable energy devices fall dramatically over the last few years, they still fall painfully short in servicing much of Sub-Saharan Africa where energy needs will only continue to grow.
This illuminating Ted-Ed video below provides a wonderful explainer as to why the oft-repeated idea of covering the Sahara with solar panels to power the continent or even earth at large does not work.
Ultimately, while I concur that work must be done in earnest to stave off a climate catastrophe, there’s way too much insincerity and a perplexing inability to face the hard truths by leading powers which lends volume to the argument by the protesters that COP26 is nothing more than a jamboree.
As Thunberg appositely puts it, it’s all blah, blah, blah.
P.S
Hi!
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Wawuu.
Thank you for simplifying thus whole COP26 thing.
Wawuu.
Thank you for simplifying thus whole COP26 thing.