Last-Minute Agreement at COP27 Covers Defeat for Malthusians

Nov. 21, 2022 (EIRNS)—As reported by Bloomberg Green, the global warming propaganda outfit set up in 2020 by Bloomberg Media, “attempts to have nations agree to peak global emissions by 2025 or phase down all unabated fossil fuels ... fell flat” at the UN’s COP27 in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt over Nov. 6-18. That’s admitting something, considering that the founder of Bloomberg Media is Sir Michael “No Coal” Bloomberg, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Climate Ambition and Solutions.

In the same vein, the European Union climate and Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans, First Vice President of the European Commission, referred to the final COP27 text as a come-down.

“We were faced with a moral dilemma. We had to give up some of the things we wanted to help this process and its parties to find a way forward.”

The final COP27 statement text even allows a transition to “low-emission” sources, which refers to use of natural gas. There is no phase-down of coal. No big pledge to get rid of fossil fuels at all.

Bloomberg reports that “major hydrocarbon producers such as Saudi Arabia blocked language that would have called for a plan to phase out oil and gas.”

“The influence of the fossil-fuel industry was found across the board,” said Laurence Tubiana, CEO at the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement. “The Egyptian Presidency has produced a text that clearly protects oil and gas petrostates and the fossil-fuel industries. This trend cannot continue in the United Arab Emirates next year,” referring to the President of COP28, which will host the UNFCCC summit in U.A.E.

At the end, an agreement was reached thanks to the commitment to create a special fund to compensate poor countries for “loss and damage” through climate mitigation measures. Many believe that this commitment will remain on paper, though.

In his final statement, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres chose to reiterate the need for participants to limit global temperature rise to below 1.5°C. Well-known Italian scientists today ridiculed the thinking involved in this has-been claim. Such statements are “kindergarten reasoning,” said Prof. Alberto Prestininzi, in a comment to Radio Radicale today. In the same interview, Prof. Franco Prodi said, “The idea that you have a switch to raise or lower global temperature is absurd, does not stand up.” Prodi and Prestininzi delivered a video address to the Nov. 12 Schiller Institute conference, “The Physical Economy of the Noösphere: Reviving the Heritage of Vladimir Vernadsky.”

As Bloomberg Green reports, “attempts to have nations agree to peak global emissions by 2025 or phase down all unabated fossil fuels ... fell flat.”

“We were faced with a moral dilemma,” said Frans Timmermans, EU climate chief. “We had to give up some of the things we wanted to help this process and its parties to find a way forward.”

British MP Alok Sharma, who acted as Britain’s COP26 president, complained that key points for which he had fought were now either missing or watered down. “Emissions peaking before 2025 as the science tells us is necessary? Not in this text. Clear follow-through on the phase-down of coal? Not in this text. Clear commitment to phase out all fossil fuels? Not in this text. The energy text? Weakened in the final minutes,” kvetched Sharma, visibly angry as the session came to an end.

The final text allows a transition to “low-emission” sources, which refers to use of natural gas.

Bloomberg reports that “major hydrocarbon producers such as Saudi Arabia blocked language that would have called for a plan to phase out oil and gas.”