The 28th session of the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties, known as COP28, concluded at the end of 2023 in Dubai of the United Arab Emirates. It was as much a success as can be imagined when a so-called “petro state” is hosting and chairing an international meeting that hoped to reduce global carbon emissions.

The great breakthrough was that the meeting unanimously agreed—all decisions have to be unanimous— to recognize fossil fuels as a source of the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet to unprecedented levels with concomitant consequences for sea levels, ocean acidity, species survival and very likely the structure of human civilization itself. This followed 2023’s COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, that eventually agreed to “phase down” coal—“phase out” was too radical—as an energy source because of its high carbon output and associated pollution problems. This modest milestone was followed by the COP28 decision to finally recognize fossil fuels generally as a source of global warming, and to therefore “transition away” from them. The hope that the “phasing out of coal, gas and oil” would be approved did not happen.

But, after 30 years of climate meetings, the principal cause of global warming, the burning of fossil fuels, has finally been officially acknowledged as an energy source that is a problem and must eventually be abandoned.

The operative word here is “eventually”. The “phasing down” of coal and the “transition away” from fossil fuels generally, sets no mandatory schedules or deadlines. In the jargon of the United Nations’ meeting, the target is “aspirational”, which means that all the signatory countries will try to comply, although they are under no legal obligation to do so. Very few, if any, of past targets have ever been met.

The pledge of the 2015 Paris Agreement to try not to exceed a temperature increase of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial temperature is probably unachievable by any known practical means. Indeed, about half the days of 2023 were above that temperature, and the 2.0°C target will likely be exceeded, with present carbon dioxide and methane emissions projected to cause a 2.9°C increase. An exercise of the imagination can anticipate what the consequences might be considering the major disruptive effects we are presently getting from a global temperature rise of just 1.2°C. In the words of Antonio Guterres, the UN’s Secretary-General, “Humanity has opened the gates of hell.”

2023 was the hottest known year in the last 120,000. And after 30 years of trying, carbon emissions, at about 40 billion tonnes per year, are still going up rather than down. All the green renewable energy from wind, solar and geothermal is not displacing fossil fuels, but is merely adding to the energy mix. The fossil fuel corporations and producing nations are not anticipating any reduction in oil and gas production in the near future. Indeed, some are expecting record years for both production and consumption. Coal consumption is expected to peak in a year or two.

Collectively, humanity doesn’t seem to have grasped the existential significance of our situation. Even uncountable weather anomalies such as extreme floods, storms and droughts combined with unprecedented fires hasn’t registered. Insurance rates are going up beyond affordability, and some places are deemed uninsurable because the risks are just too high.

Individually, the same condition of denial applies. Of course, many people feel the threat, but it is not usually internalized sufficiently to motivate any significant changes in lifestyles. Flying to distant vacations hasn’t changed. Neither has meat consumption. Neither has consumerism. The automobile market in the West is following the consumer’s taste for bigger, heavier and more luxurious vehicles that consume more energy to both make and move—the small, simple and efficient electric car of the future has not yet arrived in this market, and might not sell even if it did.

Meanwhile, the crisis unfolds, and as it does we reveal our character both as individuals and as a species. If we make excuses for ourselves, what might they be? That we don’t know? That we can disregard the problem because we survived the last heat wave or forest fire or flood? That we are just too busy with our habits and our indulgences to examine the situation and change our behaviour? To know and not to act places each and all of us in an uncomfortable existential position, if we care enough to notice.

Ray Grigg – for Sierra Quadra

Top image credit: One of the themes of COP 28 was Tripling Nuclear Energy by 2050 – Photo by Dean Calma / IAEA via Flickr (CC BY 2.0 DEED)