COP29 and the enshittification of climate talks
Tarryn Giebelmann
Content strategist and professional sustainability and green tech writer.
Hi friend,
“Enshittification” is such a great word, isn’t it?
It’s been named the 2024 Word of the Year by the Macquarie Dictionary to describe “the gradual decline of a product or service, such as social media, when companies prioritise profit over user experience”.
There could not be a better word to describe the Conference of the Parties (COP) climate talks, which have definitely suffered from enshittification over the years.
It was supposed to be an event aimed at prioritising the experience of being human on this planet and living in harmony with the natural world and its limited resources. Instead, it's become a platform for those who prioritise profit over the planet, a gathering of a bizarre assortment of stakeholders who'd rather pillage and plunder than protect.
COP27 was the reason I started this newsletter two years ago. (Here’s my first post ever).
Back then, the climate crisis was getting worse, but no one really spoke about it unless they were personally affected.
It was encouraging to see that there was still a sense of urgency and commitment to tackle the crisis at the time. So I started researching and writing about it, mostly to educate myself and understand what I could do in my own little bubble. But also to get others to think about what they could do differently in their bubbles.
It felt like there would be progress after COP27.
Like the world could still meet the 1.5°C target if everyone hauled ass and made shit happen.
But they didn’t.
And then COP28 rolled around (read my coverage of that shit show here). There was more can-kicking, foot-dragging, and finger-pointing but no real solutions or commitment to a way forward.
Instead, the oil and gas contingent grew larger, with enough representatives to derail talks and distract everyone from the work that needed to be done, i.e., to quit fossil fuels.
And now here we are, on the other side of COP29, which was more like a networking and business development event for oil and gas than a critical gathering of top minds to stop us hurtling towards 3.1°C of warming by the end of this century.
Three main topics dominated this year’s event in Azerbaijan: carbon credits, the loss and damage fund, and fossil fuels.
Carbon Credits, aka Permission to Pollute
Delegates agreed on rules to govern the global trade of carbon credits at COP29.
This is problematic because most carbon credits are bullshit, and some say the new rules still give polluters permission to pollute even more–and get away with it.
Carbon offsetting, aka polishing a turd
Countries were trading credits before the rules were even finalised, for Pete’s sake! The hosts rushed through the adoption of the standards, creating a system that’s begging to be gamed.
Why? Because:
You know what would work better? Making polluters pay. Hitting them with a fine for every ton of carbon they emit is probably the easiest way to get them to bring down emissions.
They’d still be throwing money at the problem, just like with carbon credits, but putting a price on carbon might be far more effective at solving the problem than hiding behind credits.
“[The agreement] risks facilitating cowboy carbon markets at a time when the world needs a sheriff.”– Carbon Market Watch
The upside is that the rules might increase incentives to protect carbon sinks, including forests, mangroves, and oceans, and to deploy more clean energy technologies.
The downside? Prepare for a whole lot of greenwashing!
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The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage
Few people would argue against the need for the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage to help developing nations prepare for and recover from (un)natural disasters. Poorer nations take the brunt of climate change while doing little to cause it.
At COP29, delegates agreed to contribute US$300 billion a year to the fund by 2035, up from US$100 billion now.
I’ll believe that when I see it.
The $100 billion commitment was made in 2009, when developed states agreed to set up the fund by 2020. But by the end of 2023, they had not contributed a cent. And while some money has trickled through since, it’s nowhere near what developing nations need to adapt (estimated at US$500 billion a year).
Here’s some perspective: Countries spent over US$2440 billion on weapons and military operations in 2023, and there’s a good chance they spent even more than that this year.
That’s right. One-tenth of defence spending could have saved thousands of lives instead of obliterating them.
Delegates from developing nations say the new amount is woefully inadequate and is nothing more than an optical illusion, with no agreement on who pays in and who can claim. China, for example, still doesn’t have to contribute to the fund because it’s considered a “developing country”, despite being the world’s second-largest economy and one of the biggest polluters.
But don’t worry. They’ve set a ‘New Collective Quantified Goal,’ which recognises that an annual US$1.3 trillion was needed by 2035 from high-income countries.
Good luck with that.
Quitting fossil fuels: A linguistic sleight of hand
At COP28, countries pledged to transition away from fossil fuels and triple renewable energy capacity this decade.
Unsurprisingly, there were no steps outlined at COP29 on how they would achieve this. But don’t worry; they’ll talk about it at next year’s summit in Brazil. Maybe.
Instead, delegates played word games and doing everything possible to have two particularly dirty words banned.
Saudi Arabia demanded that the words “fossil fuels” be removed from the final agreement, preferring instead that they’re called “transitional fuels”.
Sticks and stones may break my bones…
But words? Words carry influence, and we should never underestimate their power, especially when oil and gas leaders start describing fossil fuels as a “gift of God”, a phrase that feels tragically ironic in 2024, which UN Secretary-General António Guterres described as a “masterclass in climate destruction.”
As we emerge from another year of lacklustre progress on climate change, may we all have our wits about us and not fall for the sweet talk, the sugar-coating, and the wishy-washy empty promises.
Instead, remember these more accurate words used to describe the most recent climate talks:
And one I’d like to add: ENSHITTIFIED.
Some good news from COP29
It wasn’t ALL blah, blah, blah.
I’ll leave you with this.
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Quirky, curious copywriter.
2 个月Love it! I can think of many things that have been enshittified!