By now, if you haven’t heard about COP26 in the news, social media, etc., then you’ve been living under a rock. The 26th United Nations Climate Change conference is being held in Glasgow until November 12. This is officially the third meeting of the parties of the Paris Agreement, and participating countries are expected to enhance the national pledges they had committed to five years ago during COP21. Parties publicly pledge to abate, reduce, duck, shun, dodge CO2 emissions. Crafty wordsmithing and legal fine-print pour profusely over the negotiation feast. The devil is in the details.
Sometimes countries proudly double down on successes. Take Saudi Arabia; it drastically reduced its carbon intensity since 2015 through price reforms. It overachieved the 130 million ton of CO2 abatement commitment it had pledged through the UNFCCC, without cheating. It then made public during COP26 that it would move the goal post to 278 million tonnes by 2050, from a more stringent 2019 reference point.
The twist in the story, however, is that it takes carbon to abate carbon. If there is any measurable takeaway from these meetings, is that everyone likes a good international trip; even more if it means saving the planet. Forget Zoom meetings – COP26 was postponed rather than going virtual – complex negotiations require physical presence to iron-out political differences. Hugs and handshakes work deal-making wonders behind closed doors. So much so that over time COP meetings have swollen in size: from about 4,000 delegates at the first COP in Berlin to a peak of nearly 30,000 in Paris in 2015, according to UNFCCC data. The average size of delegations has also increased from eight people at the first five COPs to around 40 at the most recent five. 2015 is when countries began fanfaring their climate targets – or NDCs – which are updated every 5-years. Enthusiasm predictably languishes during sandwiched years.
All this rendezvous comes at an environmental cost – CO2 in this case. Let’s just look at estimated flight emissions: based on the MyClimate.org flight carbon calculator, COP-21 total airmiles of participants (delegates, press, etc.) produced more or less a record setting 112 thousand tonnes of CO2 – roughly 3.7 tonnes of CO2 per participant. For those of you nurtured with GHG-equivalences, the US EPA delights us with these: 24 thousand cars driven for a year, or 13.6 billion smartphones being recharged at once. Offsets are challenging too: 137 thousand acres of forest, or 3.8 million incandescent lightbulbs switching to LED.
Ironically, the greater the good intentions the greater the event’s emissions; it’s one of the costs for going green. In line with this trend, 2021 will likely be the next record setting year for COP traveling; but in consolation we can be hopeful that the more people discuss, the more the world can improve.
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