Ford Mustangs at COP28
The belief that only more wealth can help us buy our way out of the crisis has gained greater ground
is Director, Research Coordination, Council on Energy, Environment and Water is Head of Global Political Strategy at Climate Action Network International
In a historic first, all 198 signatories to the 28th United Nations’ Conference of the Parties (COP28) adopted an agreement to “transition away” from “all fossil fuels” as opposed to only coal, as was agreed upon at COP26, in Glasgow. India had played a pivotal role in Glasgow in modifying the language from “phasing out” coal to “phasing it down”. Unsurprisingly, it supported the incumbent COP President Sultan Ahmed AlJaber of the UAE when he proposed to “transition away” from oil and gas, as opposed to “phasing out”, as demanded by several developed countries and small island nations. As the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, albeit with a drastically smaller per capita emission rate, should India set a higher bar to mitigate and adapt to climate change? Karthik Ganesan and Harjeet Singh discuss the question in a conversation moderated by Edited excerpts:
IHarjeet Singh:
This COP has been different for many reasons. [It was held] in a petrostate and headed by an oil company chief. But the outcomes have been unprecedented and historic. The Loss and Damage Fund (LDF) has been operationalised, which was a hardwon victory. The text (UAE Consensus) is historic because for the first time it talks about ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels’ in energy systems in a ‘just, orderly and equitable manner’. Of course, as civil society, our demand was a fossil fuel phase out, which did not happen. There were a lot of mentions of socalled zero to low emission technologies such as renewables. That is fine, but nuclear abatement, removal technologies, carbon capture and utilisation storage, and low carbon hydrogen production are massive loopholes, which are going to provide cover to the fossil fuel industry to prolong its business.
Karthik Ganesan:
Just to clarify, it is actually the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies, but really, it’s transitioning away from fossil fuels in the energy system and phasing down the unabated use of coal. It’s a maze of words. What is clear is that subsidies for fossil fuels must go, but the reality is that if you don’t have alternatives to fossil fuels, you have to keep subsidising them because a large part of the population still relies on subsidies to consume energy. So, without the active phase out of these commodities, phasing out subsidies alone is
NOTEBOOK
Kunal Shankar.
What are your thoughts on the UAE Consensus adopted at COP28?
Karthik, do you view the COP28 outcome as being reasonable? What do you think is the role of developing countries in this regard?
don’t have any serious interest in cars but at the Dubai E◣PO city, venue of the 28th edition of the United Nations climate talks, I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of two coupes. The Ford Mustang ‘67s, one blue and one green, the staple of James Bond movies of a certain vintage, and serious objects of desire, were parked at an outdoor exhibition booth. Admiring visitors shot 360degree videos and selfies, and several Emirati asked pointed questions to the marketing representatives. To my journalistic eyes, the presence of the Mustangs at the world’s most highprofile climate conclave screamed incongruity. “Gas guzzlers,” I thought. It was akin to a disco at a dirge, a barbeque at a PETA protest, or an Armani at the beach.
But I was wrong. The marketing executive at Charge Cars, the British startup exhibiting the models, specialised in recreating “iconic, classic cars,” and making them electric. The vroom and acceleration would remain but powered by lithiumion batteries. Clean and emissionfree (we can skip the rareearth mining for now). Every car would be custommade. The premise of Charge Cars is that the affluent aficionado (each car costs $450,000) no longer needs to compromise on luxury and aesthetics to be a responsible climate citizen.
In many ways, the experience encapsulates one of the major dilemmas that has been driving debates and negotiations for 28 summits of the Conference of the Parties. There is the science: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports have synthesised mounting evidence over decades that the recordbreaking rise in average, global temperature is making cyclones more frequent and furious, monsoons more erratic, and floods more destructive. Over just two centuries, humans have taken a clean break from how they made sense and organised their lives
A woman works at a coal depot in Ahmedabad. since the Stone Age. The extraction of fossil fuels has created new modes of consumption. Plastic, the most ubiquitous product of the Age of Oil, which has shapeshifted into every imaginable consumable, was used in the earliest rolls of film stock. Cinema, the gift of the gilded age, owes itself to oil. Would the music industry without its start in vinyl become what it became, if not for oil? Fossil fuel and industrial capitalism not only democratised excess but shaped our very understanding of comfort, beauty and desire.
For the last two centuries, science has generally been an ally of technology, enabling new materials and goods to be made, but it has now suddenly turned adversarial. Its inconvenient truths about the conflict between industrialisation and climate processes is now asking the affluent minority of humanity — the developed world — to consciously embrace discomfort and wean off the life that they consider basic.
But would that be a life worth living? We could give up some goods, like bakelite switches, but can we give up culture and comfort? Certainly not, from what it looks like at the ‘developing’ end of the world. While the original climate commitment, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, envisaged a future where these two worlds would cooperate, spread the wealth, and equitably solve their way out of the crisis, things haven’t quite turned out that way.
Instead, the belief that only more wealth can help us buy our way out of the crisis has gained greater ground. While we pray for the technological miracle of stumbling into the equivalent of Clean Oil, we will continue to engage on terms of mutual distrust and find small victories in newer forms of legalese. We will reassure ourselves that by flying into a different conference in a different part of the world next year, on fossilfueled jets, we will be on our way to a “historic” solution.
HS:
APvery unlikely.
Having said that, is this a desirable outcome? No. It is pretty weak in terms of ambition. Developing countries will keep bringing back to the table the problem of financing and that will be the reason for a lack of action on their part. This is where it becomes dicey. For, developing countries, including India, will face the impacts of climate change that will have costs on the economy. India is a net importer of a lot of fossil fuels. It imports 80% of all its petroleum demand, nearly 50% or more of its gas demand, and a sizeable amount of its coal demand. Given this, it is in India’s interests to see how it can bring together industry leaders and the financing ecosystem to channel resources to hasten the transition domestically and create jobs and industrial value add within the economy. It’s happening in some way through the PLI (performancelinked incentive) scheme which speaks specifically to solar and battery technology. But it’s not happening at a scale at which India needs it — primarily because the dependence on the current energy ecosystem is significant for revenues. India needs to be clear that the impacts of climate change are going to be far more than what we have to gain by continuing our sustenance on fossil fuels.
Harjeet, the LDF has only raised about $700 million when we require trillions to address climate impacts. Developing countries still do not seem to have the knowhow to effectively decarbonise several of their sectors. How could they then be expected to raise their ambition?
We are not happy with the overall outcome, but there are several references now to 1.5°C in the energy section, which is what we were pushing for. Talking about deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, 1.5°C is fundamental for India but more importantly, for other vulnerable countries in the Pacific. And that also connects to your point on the LDF. More fossil fuels and emissions equal more loss and damage. What we got at COP28 was a compromise after 30 years. Yes, $700 million is not enough, but we see this as a major victory for climate justice movements and for vulnerable countries.
If you look at technology transfer and development that the Technology Executive Committee has been doing, they have decided to establish a technology implementation programme and that has to be supported by the financial mechanism. This has been extremely slow for developing countries for the transition towards renewable energy. It is absolutely critical that there are no trade barriers. It looks like as a package developing countries really insisted upon it and there’s going to be some movement going forward.
India needs to be clear that the impacts of climate change are going to be far more than what we have to gain by continuing our sustenance on fossil fuels.
India is in a Catch22 situation on fossil fuels. While accepting the common but differentiated responsibility argument, is there anything that India could do more to address climate impacts? KG:
It comes down to what we consider as our economic paradigm for growth. Unfortunately, we are still wedded to the notion of GDP. Coal, for instance, has environmental consequences and is valued around ₹50,000 crore in output today. The solar PV sector is valued at ₹7,000 crore and growing within the domestic economy. So, coal is about 20 times the size of the solar economy as far as domestic value is concerned. The bottom line is that we need to run the economy and the problem is that this seems to be the narrow focus. One can say that for a developing economy, livelihoods must come before the environment. This is the tradeoff that is always discussed, but it shouldn’t be a binary. For instance, our air quality standards are significantly more lax than what the World Health Organization puts out. Unless we start thinking about what is it that we are getting from economic growth and how it speaks to equity of outcomes for different parts of the population, we will continue to prioritise what works for the majority. This may not even be a numerical majority. It may be a majority in the way that they control some of the decisions that are being made. Each of these stakeholders is ultimately trying make India’s GDP grow. The