Will Any Country Achieve Paris COP 21 Targets?

March 29, 2017 – With Donald Trump’s latest executive order undoing the climate change action legacy of his predecessor, the United States has no chance of achieving its carbon emission reduction targets in 2025 and 2030. And Canada, my country, having professed its commitment not to follow in Trump’s footsteps, continues to be committed to two contradictory policies, one promoting oil sands output, and the other carbon emission reductions. The combination will not allow the country to achieve its 2030 targets either.

According to Environment Canada, as reported in today’s Toronto Star, based on current federal, territorial and provincial government policies Canada will miss the target by as much as 270 megatons, 30% below what was promised through the country’s commitment in Paris. The TransMountain Pipeline and the completion of Keystone XL means a continuing commitment to oil sands economics. And other than a published framework and statements about additional future measures, nowhere in Canada’s policies on carbon emission reductions can one find concrete planning other than carbon taxes and cap and trade schemes. In other words letting the market drive emissions downward.

If the rest of the world thinks that the market can lead us to a low-carbon future without making a significant public investment in alternative energy and technologies that can accelerate reductions, then the COP21 agreement will be a fiction.

So what is happening elsewhere?

Since Paris, the nations of the world have met again in 2016 at COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco, for the purpose of beginning to implement the global effort to combat climate change. The event coincided with the U.S. federal election and an anti-climate change regime change in that country. At the time of the meeting, 141 of the 197 countries which had signed on in Paris had ratified the agreement. Since then more have ratified.

Post Marrakech the world’s nations agreed to a COP23 May 2017 meeting in Bonn, Germany. But as of yet, the nations of the world still have to figure out an accurate and consistent way to measure emission amounts among all signatories to the Paris Agreement. Also, still missing, is consistent reporting on national carbon emission reduction progress. When you look at the latest national submissions on carbon reduction, no new reports have been provided to the

When you look at the latest national submissions in the fallout from COP21, no new reports have been submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that post-date 2015. In fact, most are from 2014 or earlier. And to-date only six countries have provided formal documents containing long-term strategies on carbon emission reductions and climate change adaptation and mitigation. We cannot be heartened too much by these six since two of them, the United States and Canada, for very different reasons, are already veering from achieving COP21 commitments. The remainder includes France, Benin, Mexico, and Germany. Benin, a small African country whose emissions per capita amount to 0.34 million metric tons per capita, (the U.S. figure is 19.78) has the capacity and commitment to submit a plan while much of the rest of the world is derelict.

The whole issue of commitment to carbon reductions is further exacerbated by the absence of climate change leadership from the United States. The latest from the new head of that country’s Environmental Protection Agency, an appointed skeptic and a man who in previous roles sued the agency which he now leads, describes carbon dioxide as not the problem. Of course, he is not a scientist.

But other countries are stepping up in the U.S. absence. The European Union, although beset by the Brexit brouhaha, and led by France and Germany, remains committed to carbon emission reductions. The EU, however, is off its reduction schedule in meeting targets set for 2020, 2025 and 2030. The United Kingdom, also, very much committed to an emission reduction strategy with hard dates for ending coal-based energy, is also distracted by formal Brexit negotiations which will start, as of today, right now.

China remains ahead of its scheduled emission reduction targets although the country coming in set very low expectations making it easy to exceed them. India, which appeared to be a reluctant climate change player, in recent weeks has announced pledges to lessen commitments to coal power in favour of renewable and nuclear energy. You can call the EU, UK, China and India commitment, the Merkel, May, Xi and Modi alliance, a much-needed antidote to Trump’s latest executive declaration aimed to kill carbon emission reduction milestones to supposedly, revive coal-belt jobs in states where the new President one the popular vote back in November.

Even Saudi Arabia, the key driver of OPEC and fossil fuel globally, has made a $50 billion clean power investment commitment for the next 6 years to begin reducing the country’s carbon footprint.

And little Fiji in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, plus members of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum, that includes South Korea and Indonesia, have committed themselves to not just ratify but implement carbon emission reduction policies.

For other global results refer to Results 2017, a publication of the European Climate Action Network, which looks at 58 countries and their activities on climate change since Paris COP21.

A country my wife and I recently visited, (see my posting of February 9), Costa Rica appears to be alone in achieving its 2030 COP21 commitments nine years ahead of schedule. By 2021, the country’s bicentennial, it will be carbon neutral.