Bob Sheak, Dec. 11, 2023
Introduction
This post focuses on COP28 as a failed effort to phase out fossil fuels. There are 2 parts. Part 1 presents evidence that global warming, spurred by emissions from fossil fuel production and consumption, continues to increase. Part 2 considers evidence that COP28 is rigged to fail and, after all is said and done, will not support the phasing out of fossil fuels.
PART 1: Global temperatures rise with the expansion of fossil fuels
Overwhelming evidence the planet is getting hotter
2023 will be the hottest year in human history, according to evidence compiled by the World Meteorological Organization, as reported by Scott Dance (https://washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/11/30/earth-hottest-year-wmo). Dance is a reporter for The Washington Post covering extreme weather news and the intersections between weather, climate, society and the environment.
“It [the 2023 temperature] will break a record set in 2016, underscoring that the world is closer than ever to the global warming thresholds that global leaders are seeking to avoid. Data from January through October shows the planet is likely to average 1.3 degrees Celsius to 1.5 degrees Celsius above a preindustrial norm this year, the WMO said.”
“Constraining global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels is the world’s most important climate goal,” Dance reports. However, “Scientists say it is becoming increasingly out of reach but that achieving it would save coral reefs, preserve polar ice and prevent dramatic sea-level rise,” along with reducing other increasingly catastrophic developments.
Dance quotes Petteri Taalas, secretary general of World Meteorological Organization, who “stressed that this year’s warming has had real-life harms around the world and pushed the planet to new weather and climate extremes.” Taalas also pointed to specific trends. “Greenhouse gas levels are record high. Global temperatures are record high. Sea level rise is record high. Antarctic sea ice is at record low….”
Taalas, along with United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, maintains the data should incite urgency in the global leaders convening COP28 in Dubai from Nov. 30 through Dec. 12, and remind them there is still hope that climate goals can be reached. In a video message that played at the Dubai conference, Guterres struck a hopeful note: “We have the road map to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the worst of climate chaos. But we need leaders to fire the starting gun at COP28 on a race to keep the 1.5 degree limit alive.” At the same time, past and present actions by big fossil fuel producers and their governments indicate that they are locked into fossil fuels, the greatest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Dance reminds us,
“Earth shattered monthly average temperature records in July, which marked the planet’s hottest month ever observed and perhaps the start of its hottest extended stretch in 125,000 years. July also brought humanity’s first taste of a world 1.5 degrees hotter, on average, than it was before the widespread consumption of fossil fuels and emissions of planet-warming gases.”
“August was also record hot. Global temperature anomalies surged even further from normal in September and then shattered another monthly record in October.
A Climate Central analysis released earlier this month found that the stretch from November 2022 through October 2023 was Earth’s hottest 12-month period on record.
“The heat has had clear consequences. As the planet simmered at record peak warmth in July, deadly heat waves, extreme floods and raging wildfires signaled climate change alarm bells. Some 3 in 4 people around the world suffered at least 30 days of heat so extreme that it is estimated to be at least three times as likely today as it was before the Industrial Revolution, Climate Central found.”
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Chris Walker, a news writer at Truthout, also reports on how the last 12 months were the hottest in the last 125,000 years (https://truthout.org/articles/the-last-12-months-were-hottest-the-world-has-experienced-in-last-125000-years). He adds some information to buttress Dance’s analysis, referring to evidence from
Climate Central and from Andrew Pershing, the vice president for science at Climate Central.
“Global average temperatures over the past year were 1.32 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels.
“Average global temperatures set a new 12-month record high, according to a new analysis of climate data, coming alarmingly close to a threshold at which scientists believe the climate crisis will become irreversible for many of the world’s ecosystems,” that is, at 1.5 degrees Celsius. The global average temperature has been 1.32 degrees Celsius over this year [2.4 degrees Fahrenheit]. “That number comes dangerously close to the 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels that climate scientists say would be enough to create an irreversible crisis that will destroy entire ecosystems around the planet.”
Walker alludes to some of the current effects. “Ninety-nine percent of humanity was exposed to above-average temperatures in the period between November 2022 and October 2023, the report found, with around 5.7 billion of the world’s 7.8 billion individuals being exposed to at least 30 days of higher-than-normal temperatures that were ‘made at least three times more likely by the influence of climate change….’”
“Such long streaks of heat can be incredibly harmful, resulting in thousands of deaths, [as] each day when temperatures exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit is associated with around 1,373 deaths in the U.S. alone.”
“‘While climate impacts are most acute in developing countries near the equator, seeing climate-fueled streaks of extreme heat in the U.S., India, Japan and Europe underscores that no one is safe from climate change,’ Pershing said.”
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“A Slow-Motion Gaza” –
Tom Engelhardt analyzes the lack of progress in curtailing global warming (https://tomdispatch.com/a-slow-motion-gaza). Engelhardt created and runs the website TomDispatch.com.
He points out that humanity and much of life on planet Earth could be extinguished by nuclear war or global warming. His focus in this article is on the latter.
“Imagine this: humanity in its time on Earth has already come up with two distinct ways of destroying this planet and everything on it. The first is, of course, nuclear weapons, which once again surfaced in the ongoing nightmare in the Middle East. (An Israeli minister recently threatened to nuke Gaza.) The second, you won’t be surprised to learn, is what we’ve come to call ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ — the burning, that is, of fossil fuels to desperately overheat our already flaming world. In its own fashion, that could be considered a slow-motion version of the nuking of the planet.
“Put another way, in some grim sense, all of us now live in Gaza. (Most of us just don’t know it yet.)”
“Yes, in the midst of the ongoing Middle Eastern catastrophe, the latest study by James Hanson, the scientist who first sounded the climate alarm to Congress back in the 1980s, appeared. In it, he suggested that, in this year of record temperatures, our planet is heating even more rapidly than expected. The key temperature danger mark, set only eight years ago at the Paris climate agreement, 1.5 degrees Centigrade above the pre-industrial level, could easily be reached not in 2050 or 2040, but by (or even before) 2030. Meanwhile, another recent study suggests that humanity’s ‘carbon budget’ — that is, the amount of carbon we can put into the atmosphere while keeping global temperature rise at or under that 1.5-degree mark — is now officially going to hell in a handbasket. In fact, by October, a record one-third of the days in 2023 had broken that 1.5-degree mark in what is undoubtedly going to prove another — and yes, I know how repetitive this is — record year for heat.”
Furthermore, Engelhardt points out, “when it comes to the globe’s two greatest greenhouse gas emitters, China is still opening new coal mines at a remarkably rapid pace, while the U.S., the world’s biggest oil producer, is expected to have ‘a third of planned oil and gas expansion globally between now and 2050.’ And the news isn’t much better for the rest of the planet, which, given the dangers involved, should be headline-making fare. No such luck, of course.”
Setting the Planet Afire
“And yet, if you were to look away from Gaza for a moment, you might notice that significant parts of the Middle East have been experiencing an historic megadrought since 1998 (yes, 1998!). The temperatures baking the region are believed to be “16 times as likely in Iran and 25 times as likely in Iraq and Syria” thanks to the warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, if you take a skip and a jump from the flaming Middle East to Greenland, you might notice that, in recent years, glaciers there have been melting at — yes, I know this sounds unbearably repetitious — record rates (five times faster, in fact, in the last 20 years), helping add to sea level rise across the planet. And mind you, that rise will only accelerate as the Arctic and Antarctic melt ever more rapidly. And perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the Arctic is already warming four times faster than the global average.”
Engelhardt gives some additional examples.
“You’ve probably forgotten by now, but there were those record heat waves and fires — and no, I’m not thinking about the ones that swept across Europe or that broiled parts of Greece amid record flooding. I’m thinking about the ones in Canada that hit so much closer to home for us Americans. The wildfires there began in May and, by late June, had already set a typical seasonal record, only to burn on and on and on (adding up to nine times the normal seasonal total!) deep into October, sending billows of smoke across significant parts of the United States, while setting smoke pollution records.” He refers to “a recent congressionally mandated report released by the Biden administration on global warming [that] found that this country is actually heating up faster than the global average.”
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Don’t lose sight of the causes
Erie C. Ellis, a professor of geography and environmental systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County New York Times, worries that the focus on the 1.5 goal [which is important] leads us to ignore or remain ignorant of the causes of global warming (https://nytimes.com/2023/12/04/opinion/rich-nations-climate-change-summit.html). Dr. Ellis, a visiting fellow at the Oxford Martin School, and the author of “Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction.”
Ellis argues,
“We have become obsessed with targets, the principal one being to hold planetary warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial average. But this is a planetary target, not a societal obligation. And in that sense, it is meaningless. The clearest evidence is that the planet is likely to surpass that target by the 2030s. Last year global greenhouse gas emissions continued at their historically high rates of growth. Passing the 1.5-degree mark is merely a symptom of the underlying condition: the continued burning of fossil fuels. That’s what we must stop.”
“The ultimate solution to major societal challenges is clear: leadership by those most responsible to invest in the solutions and restitutions required to mitigate the damage.” They have done it before.
“The successful effort to save the ozone layer is a case in point. International cooperation, backed by strong scientific evidence and led by the nations most responsible, resolved this global problem. In the mid-1970s, scientists discovered that a novel group of chemicals portrayed by industry as chemically inert, chlorofluorocarbons, were depleting stratospheric ozone and allowing more UVB radiation to reach Earth’s surface. This radiation can cause skin cancer and lower a body’s ability to fight illness. Little progress to reduce harmful chlorofluorocarbon emissions was made until the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica in 1985, leading to an agreement by the 20 major chlorofluorocarbon-producing nations to phase down and ultimately end their production. The ozone layer is expected to fully recover to pre-1980s levels within decades.”
Phase out fossil fuels
“As with the ozone crisis, the solution to the climate crisis lies at the feet of those responsible. There should be no acceptable allowance for the wealthy producers of carbon pollution to continue to emit any of the greenhouse gases that are heating our planet faster than at any other time since the dinosaurs. We must end investments in carbon-polluting industries and ramp up investments to build clean energy systems. No more offsetting industrial carbon pollution in forests and other ecosystems. If there are to be targets for shaping a better climate future, they should be directed at the specific industries and nations responsible for polluting the atmosphere with fossil carbon emissions — and incentivizing them to replace carbon-emitting technologies with clean ones.”
The U.S. and most other developed nations have done poorly in curtailing global warming
Somini Sengupta reports on a U.N. report that documents “nations” get a “very poor grade” on their insufficient efforts to curtail global warming (https://nytimes.com/2023/11/14/climate/united-nations-ndc-report-card.html).
“Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Despite the clear human and environmental toll of global warming, countries are taking only ‘baby steps’ to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, a senior United Nations official said, summarizing a new U.N. report card on the promises made by governments so far.
The U.N. findings, published Tuesday [Nov. 4, 2023], are the latest of several assessments that paint a dire picture in which the countries aren’t doing nearly enough to keep global warming within relatively safe levels. “‘Today’s report shows that governments combined are taking baby steps to avert the climate crisis,’ said Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the U.N. climate change agency. ‘And it shows why governments must make bold strides forward.’” The 133-page report “was written by researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center.”
“Government subsidies for fossil fuels grew last year…spurred by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the skyrocketing cost of oil and gas.
Among the winners of that price increase were the oil giants of the world, including U.S. oil majors and petrostates in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia.
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Past promises and agreements continue spending on fossil fuels
Hiroko Tabrichi adds to this discussion, also reporting on research on how nations that vowed to halt warming are expanding fossil fuels (https://nytimes.com/2023/11/08/climate/fossil-fuels-expanding.html). She is “an investigative reporter on the Climate desk at the New York Times, [and] reports widely on money, influence and misinformation in climate policy.” In this article, she considers a United Nations-backed report released on Nov. 8, 2023. The report, “led by researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute, found that 20 major fossil-fuel producing nations of the world plan to keep increasing coal production until 2030, and oil and gas production decades beyond that.”
She continues. “In 2030, if current projections hold, the United States will drill for more oil and gas than at any point in its history. Russia and Saudi Arabia plan to do the same.
“They’re among the world’s fossil fuel giants that, together, are on course this decade to produce twice the amount of fossil fuels than a critical global warming threshold allows, according to a United Nations-backed report issued on Wednesday.
“The report, which looked at 20 major fossil fuel producing countries, underscores the wide gap between world leaders’ lofty promises to take stronger action on climate change and their nations’ actual production plans.”
“Wednesday’s report squarely lays the onus of curbing fossil fuel production on the world’s richest nations. For each fossil fuel — coal, oil or gas — the combined levels of production being planned by the 10 highest-income countries alone would already warm the world beyond 1.5 degrees by 2040, said Ploy Achakulwisut, who led the research.”
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More on the U.S.
Clifford Krauss specializes on the energy industry for the New York Times. In this article, he discusses how surging U.S. oil production has brought prices at the pump down while at the same time increasing oil and gasoline emissions
(https://nytimes.com/2023/12/01/business/energy-environment/us-oil-production-record-climate.html). Here’s some of what he writes.
“Only three years after U.S. oil production collapsed during the pandemic, energy companies are cranking out a record 13.2 million barrels a day, more than Russia or Saudi Arabia. The flow of oil has grown by roughly 800,000 barrels a day since early 2022 and analysts expect the industry to add another 500,000 barrels a day next year.
As a result, “This week the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.25 a gallon, 25 cents below what it cost a year earlier and nearly $1.80 below the record price set in June 2022, according to AAA.”
“The main driver of the production surge is a delayed response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, which sent the price of oil to well over $100 a barrel for the first time in nearly a decade. The wells that were first drilled last year are now in full swing.
More exports, more imports
The U.S. is exporting “roughly four million barrels a day, more than any member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries except Saudi Arabia. On balance, the United States still imports more than it exports because domestic demand exceeds supply and many American refineries can more easily refine the heavier oil produced in Canada and Latin America than the lighter crude that oozes out of the shale fields of New Mexico, North Dakota and Texas.”
Krauss is concerned. “More supply and lower prices could increase demand for fossil fuels at a time when the world leaders, who are meeting in Dubai, are straining to reach agreements that would accelerate the fight against climate change. Scientists generally agree that the world is far from achieving the goals necessary to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming, which is caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal.”
Biden’s contradictory policies
Krauss points out that Biden and his administration “has supported green energy and battery-powered cars, he has also hectored oil companies to increase production in an effort to drive down prices for consumers.”
“[Biden] has approved a large drilling project in Alaska over the objections of environmentalists and a small number of offshore oil and gas permits.”
“Most of the new U.S. oil production is coming from the Permian Basin, which straddles Texas and New Mexico. There are also some new projects and expansions in Alaska and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.
Raoul LeBlanc, a vice president at S&P Global Commodity Insights
said the investments made during the second half of last year were now bearing fruit. He predicted that American production could rise to 13.7 million barrels a day by the end of 2024, unless there is a deep recession and prices drop below $65 a barrel, around $10 lower than the current price.”
“‘I am very surprised by how much we have produced this year,’ said Scott Sheffield, chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources, a major producer in the Permian Basin that is being acquired by Exxon Mobil. He predicted that the country could produce 15 million barrels a day in five years.”
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Part 2: COP28
Here’s a concise summary from Wikipedia of what COP28 is about
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference).
“The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly referred to as COP28,[1] is the 28th United Nations Climate Change conference, being held from 30 November until 12 December 2023 at Expo City, Dubai.[2][3] The conference has been held annually since the first UN climate agreement in 1992. The COP conferences are intended for governments to agree on policies to limit global temperature rises and adapt to impacts associated with climate change.[4]
“The conference has been widely criticized, both regarding the leader of the summit, as well as the choice of the United Arab Emirates as the host country, given its dubious and opaque environmental record, and role as a major producer of fossil fuels.[5] President of the summit, Sultan Al Jaber, is the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), leading to concerns over conflict of interest.[6] Over 100 members of the US Congress and European Parliament called for the United Arab Emirates to vacate Jaber from the position.[7] Claims of greenwashing of Jaber on Wikipedia through paid editing, the legal inability to criticize Emirati corporations in the UAE, covert access to conference emails by ADNOC, and the invitation of Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad have all raised concerns regarding the integrity of the conference.[8][9][10][11] Organized bot farms intended on defending Jaber and the UAE were also uncovered in June of 2023.[12] On 21 November, Jaber stated that there was ‘no science’ behind fossil fuel phase-out.[13] Six days later, leaked documents appeared to show plans for the UAE to use the conference to strike new fossil fuel deals with other nations, sparking international outcry.[14]”
Here are some addition points on why, though not desirable, that COP28 will fail to curb fossil fuels, the primary sources of global warming.
#1 – Stacking COP28 with fossil fuel supporters
Thom Hartmann, a talk-show host and prolific author, offers information about who will be in attendance at COP28 (https://commondreams.org/opinion/can-cop28-succeed). His article was published on Dec. 1, 2023.
“More than 70,000 people from nearly 200 countries — including an estimated 700+ fossil fuel industry lobbyists (there were 636 at the last conference) — are arriving this week in Dubai for the opening of the 28th “Conference Of Parties” (COP28) that are signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). COP is the main decision-making body of the UNFCCC.”
#2 – The unmet challenges at COP28
David Gelles, a correspondent on the Climate Desk at the New York Times, reports on the challenges facing COP 28 (https://nytimes.com/2023/11/30/climate/cop28-climate-dubai-un.html).
Countries talk about the need to cut the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet, but emissions are reaching record highs this year. Rich countries have pledged to help poor countries transition away from coal, oil and gas, but have largely failed to fulfill their promises for financial aid. After 27 years of meetings, countries still can’t agree to stop burning fossil fuels, which scientists say is the main driver of climate change.
“And this year, the hottest year in recorded history, the talks known as COP28 are being hosted by a country that is ramping up its production of oil and has been accused of using its position as facilitator of the summit to strike oil and gas deals on the sidelines.
“‘There is skepticism of this COP — where it is and who is running it,’ said Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute, a research organization.”
As point out earlier, “the United States is also producing a record amount of crude oil and was the world’s leading exporter of natural gas in the first six months of 2023. And while China has led the world in electric vehicle adoption and is investing heavily in renewable electricity, it is also building new coal-fired power plants as its emissions continue to rise.”
“We’ve had COPs for how many years now?” said Avinash Persaud, a climate adviser for Barbados. “If people had been compelled to act at COP1 or COP2 or COP15, we would have had a different world.”
“Still,” Gelles writes, “the COP process is the only vehicle where diplomats, corporate chiefs, princes and presidents come together to focus on a planetary crisis.” But, as considered in Part 1 of this post, COP has a 27 (now 28) year record of failing to achieve effective strategies to reverse the crisis. He considers the reasons for being skeptical, if not being cynical, as to the chances COP28 will address the global warming crisis in any meaningful way. Here’s some of what he writes.
“The United Arab Emirates, the host country, is one of the world’s largest oil producers. And the man presiding over the event, Sultan Al Jaber, happens to be the head of Adnoc, the state-owned company that supplies 3 percent of the world’s oil. He also runs the much smaller state-owned renewables company, Masdar.
“Some activists contend that the U.A.E.’s role as host, and Mr. Al Jaber’s twin roles as oil executive and COP28 president, compromise the credibility of the conference. In the spring, more than 100 members of the U.S. Congress and European Parliament called for Mr. Al Jaber to be removed from the COP presidency, a position that rotates among countries each year.
Gelles quotes Al Gore: “They went too far in naming the C.E.O. of one of the largest — and by many measures one of the dirtiest — oil companies on the planet as the president of the U.N. Conference on Climate this year,”
The lack of meaningful action is also linked to “unmet promises made last year at COP27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Wealthy countries agreed to create a fund to compensate poor countries for destruction from climate disasters. But progress has been painstakingly slow. There has also been scant progress on efforts to overhaul the lending practices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund — which critics say can trap poor countries in a cycle of debt and disaster.”
“This has left many developing countries mistrustful of the COP talks.”
#3 – COP28 is rigged to fail?
Thom Hartmann is skeptical on what the conference can accomplish, asking whether COP28 is rigged from the start (https://commondreams.org/opinion/can-cop28-succeed).
Hartmann reports, “the fossil fuel producing nations of the world are banding together to block serious efforts at shifting the world away from their products and toward renewable energy sources.
“In a particularly cynical move, a Saudi program called the ‘Oil Demand Sustainability Programme (ODSP)’ is reaching out to poor countries, particularly in Africa, to encourage them to expand their use of oil to power transportation, housing, and electricity.” And “Russia — a country with an economy about the size of Italy that is almost entirely based on fossil fuel production — has declared their intention to block any efforts to reduce demand for the oil and gas they produce.”
“This COP28 meeting is being held in the capital city of the world’s seventh largest producer of fossil fuels.”
#4 – Saudi Arabia’s opposition to any plan at COP28 to reduce fossil fuels
New York Times journalists Lisa Friedman, Brad Plumer and Vivian Nereim write on Saudi Arabia’s opposition at COP28 to any proposal limiting fossil fuels
(https://nytimes.com/2023/12/10/climate/saudi-arabia-cop28-fossil-fuels.html).
Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading exporter of oil, has become the biggest obstacle to an agreement at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, where countries are debating whether to call for a phaseout of fossil fuels in order to fight global warming, negotiators and other officials said.
“The Saudi delegation has flatly opposed any language in a deal that would even mention fossil fuels — the oil, gas and coal that, when burned, create emissions that are dangerously heating the planet. Saudi negotiators have also objected to a provision, endorsed by at least 118 countries, aimed at tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030.
“Saudi diplomats have been particularly skillful at blocking discussions and slowing the talks, according to interviews with a dozen people who have been inside closed-door negotiations. Tactics include inserting words into draft agreements that are considered poison pills by other countries; slow-walking a provision meant to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change; staging a walkout in a side meeting; and refusing to sit down with negotiators pressing for a phaseout of fossil fuels.
“The Saudi opposition is significant because U.N. rules require that any agreement forged at the climate summit be unanimously endorsed. Any one of the 198 participating nations can thwart a deal.”
“Saudi Arabia has a long history of throwing sand in the gears of climate talks. In fact, one reason that the U.N. climate body operates by consensus, with any one country able to block a deal, is that Saudi Arabia demanded those rules at the first climate summit in 1992 and has fought to maintain them ever since.”
“The Saudi delegation is dominated by members of the country’s Energy Ministry, which is closely associated with the state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco. As recently as last year it pushed, along with Russia, to delete a reference to “human-induced climate change” from a U.N. scientific document, effectively challenging the scientific fact that burning fossil fuels causes climate change.”
#5 – Pushing the still unviable nuclear fusion at COP 28
Jennifer McDermott’s article for AP on Dec. 5, 2023 analyzes John Kerry’s “fusion strategy as a source of clean energy
https://apnews.com/article/fusion-nuclear-john-kerry-cop28-climate-power-energy ….
McDermott writes, “The United States will work with other governments to speed up efforts to make nuclear fusion a new source of carbon-free energy, U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry said Tuesday, the latest of many U.S. announcements the last week aimed at combatting climate change.” And Kerry also said: ‘We are edging ever-closer to a fusion-powered reality. And at the same time, yes, significant scientific and engineering challenges exist,’ Kerry said, in Dubai for U.N. climate talks. ‘Careful thought and thoughtful policy is going to be critical to navigate this.’”
What is nuclear fusion?
“Nuclear fusion melds two hydrogen atoms together to produce a helium atom and a lot of energy—which could be used to power cars, heat and cool homes and other things that currently are often powered by fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas. That makes fusion a potentially major solution to climate change, which is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Still, fusion is a long way off, while other clean technologies like wind, solar and others are currently in use and could be increased.”
Fusion has not yet, and may never, become a viable option
Researchers have been trying for decades to harness the reaction that powers the sun and other stars — an elusive goal because it requires such high temperatures and pressures that it easily fizzles out.
Kerry wants to speed that up in hopes of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, a benchmark set by the international community. He urged nations to come together to “harness the power of fundamental physics and human ingenuity in response to a crisis.”
Research and development in early stages
“The United States and United Kingdom announced a partnership in November to accelerate global fusion energy development, and the United States announced its own vision last year for research needed over the decade. In southern France, 35 nations are collaborating on an experimental machine to harness fusion energy, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale, carbon-free source of energy. That project has been plagued by delays and cost overruns. On Friday, Japan and Europe said they were launching the world’s largest fusion reactor.
“Both China and Russia are partners in ITER, and China in particular is moving aggressively to promote fusion research and development, said Andrew Holland, chief executive officer of the Fusion Industry Association.
Some nations at COP28 agree to continue research on fusion energy
“Until now, all nuclear power has come from nuclear fission reactors in which atoms are split — a process that produces both energy and radioactive waste. The global nuclear industry launched an initiative at COP28 for nations to pledge to triple this kind of nuclear energy by 2050. More than 20 have already signed on, including the United States and the host of this year’s talks, the United Arab Emirates.
“Fusion doesn’t produce the radioactive waste of nuclear fission. In a global race to make it a practical and possibly limitless power source, more than $6 billion has been invested to date, according to the Fusion Industry Association. There are more than 40 fusion companies globally now with over 80% of the investment in the United States. Thirteen of the companies emerged in just the past year and a half.
McDermott quotes Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. Lyman said: “But despite the hype, reliable and cheap nuclear fusion energy is still a pipe dream,” and “is far less likely than other alternatives to be commercialized on a timeframe that would allow it to help prevent the worst effects of climate change, he said. Lyman said the enormous price tag could also rob more promising alternatives, such as renewable energy, of resources they need to thrive.”
Concluding thoughts
Global warming is worsening. Efforts, like those at COP28, are failing. Certainly, COP28 will do nothing to stop in time or ever the production of fossil fuels in relatively rich countries across the globe, including the U.S. All humanity will suffer, though the most vulnerable populations especially in poor countries will suffer most severely.
The Biden administration has a mixed record, but on balance is unable or politically unwilling to push for policies to end dependence on the polluting and climate destructive fossil fuels. According to polls, the issue of “climate change” is not high on the agendas of the majority of American voters.
Though it is unlikely, perhaps the Democratic Party candidates and voters will surprise us in the 2024 elections. But the powerful fossil fuel corporate interests will continue to use their money and political influence to stymie meaningful reform. If Trump is elected, he is on record of wanting to ramp up the production of oil and gas in the U.S. and on opposing any international agreements to phase out coal, oil, and gas. He will order the withdrawal of the U.S. from any international agreements to curtail fossil fuel production and consumption, repeal the Biden administration’s Inflation Adjustment Act, slash funds for the Environmental Protection Agency, and close the Energy Department’s renewable energy offices (https://washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/11/trump-climate-talks-COP28-dubai).
Vital issues - challenging pol and econ power 