COP29: Temp Check on the Global Climate
An Inconvenient Truth? The 2006 doco was pretty accurate
This is the tenth edition of Honey Drops, a curated view of what’s been happening around the Corporate Sustainability world each week. Thanks for all the support you have provided, it has become one of the highlights of my week writing this newsletter.
As The Ocelli Group takes its name from the bee's ocelli, those remarkable eyes that guide its flight via the sun, I felt it a natural extension for this Corporate Sustainability newsletter to incorporate their nectar’s alchemy: Honey.
Feel free to forward on to anyone you think would benefit from a drop on their toast or a stir in their tea.
Today, we’re spending time on the western shores of the Caspian Sea at COP29: Baku, Azerbaijan.
Note: I have transcribed the long-form quotes in this week’s post, as I did in last week’s edition for Ed Miliband, so if there are any mistakes or missing articles, you know who to contact.
Will The Real Al Gore Please Stand Up:
Firstly, I’m going to break the cardinal rule of writing a newsletter, and implore you to click away and watch this three minute highlight reel of Al Gore’s COP29 speech posted by Oliver Bolton. It’s a vintage, Statesman address, encapsulating every emotion many of us know all too well, while pulling zero punches. In fact, he conveys so much in this video alone, I can’t do justice to each point myself. It’s powerful. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.
For those who want a tl;dv version:
He provides a reminder of the competing messengers: “The fact that the scientists, who predicted all of this, decades ago, who have been proven dead right, should cause the rest of us to pay more attention to what they are telling us now. Do we listen to the polluters, who don’t want to do anything that might reduce fossil fuels, or do we listen to the scientists, who have been telling us what we need to do”
Covers climate impacts on immigration: “We’re already seeing the out-migration of climate migrants, by the way, and the world could see a billion climate migrants this century, according to the Lancet Commission, and if you think about how bad the political knock-on consequences of a few million has been - triggering xenophobia, ultra-nationalism - it’s difficult to imagine what a billion climate refugees would be.”
And adds in a takedown for good measure: “The fossil fuel industry, that has spared no expense to capture the process - you know, they’re way better at capturing politicians than emissions. They’ve gotten pretty good at capturing COPs, by the way.”
The Sustainability space has always one on the sidelines of the financial system. It has never been in the majority. It has always been Sisyphean.
It has taken decades to reach the level of commercial integration that currently exists.
And the reason we have collectively achieved what we have to date is simple: as Biden’s National Climate Advisor, Ali Zaidi, offered: it would be economic malpractice for any player to cede clean energy leadership considering the enormous financial upside it now presents countries, regions and companies.
Ed Miliband also said onstage at COP last week, the economics and ethics of clean energy have now joined. Clearly he’s been inspired by the Spice Girls, who presciently opined in ‘96 in the lead up to 1997’s Kyoto Protocol:
COP29 - Acronyms Are In:
A new acronym has been added to the expanding lexicon this COP, and another has been the focus of an upgrade.
Acronym 1 - NCQG: New Collective Quantified Goal (aka Climate Finance)
The 2015 Paris Agreement saw governments agree to a climate finance target of $100 billion per year from developed nations to developing nations be in place by 2020 in order to tackle climate change. This threshold was met last year.
For the New Collective Quantified Goal, developing countries are pushing for $1 trillion to $2 trillion in annual funding between now and 2030, led by India on behalf of Like-Minded Developing Countries.
You‘ll be surprised to hear this fast-approaching deadline has caused much division between the Global North and the Global South, with disagreements over who should be paying, what qualifies as relevant finance mechanisms, and how much should be paid.
The NCQG is still being negotiated as I write, and its delay is having a knock-on effect for the many mitigation and adaptation initiatives requiring access to this capital. The WWF has stated that the outcome will be influenced by the G20 countries as the funders of this new Goal, and they are currently meeting in Rio de Janeiro.
Acronym 2 - NDC: Nationally Determined Contribution
Under the Paris Agreement, Nationally Determined Contributions illustrate the level of decarbonisation each country will deliver in order to keep global temperatures “well below” 2 degrees, and ideally under 1.5 degrees. For example, Australia’s current NDC is set at 43% reduction of greenhouse gases below 2005 levels by 2030. The recently-legislated mandatory climate reporting will provide the Federal Government a mechanism for greater transparency and accurate reporting across the economy when calculating their future Contributions. So yes, it’s about compliance, but it’s not compliance for the sake of it.
As these pledges must be updated every five years to deliver more ambitious reductions, the new NDCs are due for each country by February. First out of the gates, announcing their new NDC at COP29 have been the UK and Brazil, announcing pledges of 81% below 1990 levels and 59-67% below 2005 levels by 2035, respectively.
Onwards and upwards.
Latest Missives from COP29: Biden’s National Climate Advisor, Ali Zaidi, speaking onstage with Bloomberg Zero’s Akshat Rathi about the new U.S. Administration’s impact on climate action
Zaidi: “Look, if you work on climate change, you’re always counting on there being wildcards, but I think there’s a real robustness in the system. The first part we talked about already, and that’s the private sector and the role it’s going to play and, I think, continuing to pull the policy certainty along. They have made $1 trillion dollars worth of certain bets predicated on a policy regime - they’re not going to want see the rug pulled out from underneath them”
Rathi: “Yeah, well, we had the ExxonMobil CEO yesterday telling us the U.S. should not pull out of the Paris Agreement”
Zaidi: “Yeah, and that’s not your most obvious ally in this fight. But not only calling for staying in Paris, but also calling to keep intact the [IRA] incentives put in place. So I think there’s that piece of it.
“I think the robust comes from state policy, you’ve got more than half the [U.S.] states with Democrat leadership and very much engaged in advancing clean energy, but that actually ignores the fact that you have a bunch more Republican Governors, whose entire economic theory rests on investments from the Inflation Reduction Act. You go to places like Oklahoma, Governor Stitt, an amazing leader at attracting private investment to his state - most of that private investment is clean energy. Governor Kemp in Georgia, most of that investment - clean energy. Go to South Carolina, Governor McMaster, most of that new investment - clean energy.
“So if you wanna see the politics of this, you look at the House, where they have written to their Leader (House Speaker, Mike Johnson), you look at the private sector, where they put the bet on clean energy future, you look at the states where they’re running towards clean energy.
“This is actually a much more robust system, with a lot more momentum behind it, than we had in 2017. So I hear you on the risk factors, but I’m focused on the incredible momentum and I think that’s where I, I put my stock.”
2 Quotes From Others:
Just some more from Al Gore, COP29:
“The single state of Florida has more solar panels than the entire continent of Africa. This is a DISGRACE. This is a disgrace for our world community. Africa has 60% of the solar potential of the entire world. Africa has solar potential that is 400 times greater than the potential of all the fossil fuel reserves they think are located in Africa. And yet this pitiful result, because they are walled off from private capital on equal borrowing rates so they can participate in this clean energy revolution.”
Secretary General on the U.N., Antonio Guterres with a pointed economic message:
“Doubling down on fossil fuels is absurd. The clean energy revolution is here. No group, no business, and no government can stop it.”
1 Thing For You To Ponder:
We’re seeing a significant amount of burnout take place in Sustainability, as great minds with good hearts battle to balance the long-term urgency with the day-to-day decision-making process required within their organisations. Coupled with outright hostility from some functions if there’s minimal leadership from the exec team and Board.
While it may not be obvious to you now, your dedication to your role will attract more people to see their job is a ‘climate job’. This expansion will only increase the exponential shifts we’re seeing as more organisations begin pulling together incomplete carbon management datasets, initiating mandatory climate reports, engaging their stakeholders in meaningful, commercial conversations and reducing their organisation’s climate impact.
Until then, hold people’s comments lightly, and remember that most people do have genuinely good intentions:
Until next week,
Dan