Gutted, the bill would bleed out little more than $300 billion in tax incentives for new-fangled technology.Įven the president of COP26, Alok Sharma, admitted that the “overarching ambition” of the conference wasn’t to prevent more than 1.5✬ of warming, which the 2015 Paris Agreement warned against, but simply to sustain belief that achieving the target was possible. Without these, the goal of halving 2005-level emissions by 2030 was unlikely. Gone, too, were penalties for polluting industries and a border tax on imports from polluting nations. Unfortunately, its promised clean energy standard was now missing the key mechanism to transition the entire electricity sector (the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after transportation) to renewable energy by 2035. A bargaining chip of sorts, robust regulations at home would restore confidence in the United States as a climate leader abroad. “I’m very worried,” he said, “because it might go wrong, and we might not get the agreements that we need.”Ī few days later, President Biden announced a much anticipated “framework” for the Build Back Better Act. Hunched over a desk, his tie twisted, he lowered his eyes and mumbled discouraging words. On October 25, a week before COP26 began, British prime minister Boris Johnson addressed twenty-five of the planet’s future leaders at the Children’s Climate Press Conference in Downing Street. The heads of state themselves seemed primed for failure. Our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words and promises.” Only nonsense named the truth of what would take place. Greta Thunberg put it best in a speech she delivered one month before the conference at the Youth4Climate summit in Milan: “Green economy blah blah blah, net zero by 2050 blah blah blah. Everyone agreed that COP26 would be some kind of performance, the needle on the end of delusion. I heard this from friends, activists, university colleagues.
Before arriving in Glasgow, the phrase I heard most in connection with the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) wasn’t “just transition” or “sustainability” or “resilience.” It wasn’t “carbon capture and storage” or “green hydrogen” or “renewable energy.” It was “shitshow.” Par exemple: “COP 26 is going to be a shitshow.”
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