With the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference – COP 26 – scheduled to begin in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, in two days, international news networks are publishing reports of what they claim is a likely conspiracy by some of the ‘heavy hitters’ in the global fossil fuel industry to seek to downplay the extent of what climate scientists say is an unfolding global climate change crisis. The stories assert that unnamed climate scientists confirm that this is part of an attempt to water down the outcomes of the Glasgow deliberations on the extent to which fossil fuel recovery will have to be reduced in the period ahead if a global climate disaster is to be averted.
Concerns in this regard centre on what, reportedly, could be collusion amongst major oil-producing countries, including members of the influential Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to steer the Glasgow forum in a direction designed to slow down the rate at which fossil fuel recovery will be reduced. In effect, what the reports suggest is that while climate negotiators from more than eighty countries across the world are gathered in Scotland for a fortnight to attempt to hammer out a new agreement to serve as a global compass for decisions on cutting emissions to a level scientists hope will limit global warming, there are likely to be ‘elephants in the room’. Media reports allude to a piece authored by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) which asserts that commitments to significant reductions in fossil fuel recovery by some countries notwithstanding, some governments still plan to produce more than double that amount of energy from fossil fuels in 2030. “Despite increased climate-change ambitions and net-zero commitments, governments around the world still plan to produce and consume more fossil fuels in 2030 than what would be consistent with the 2015 Paris climate accord’s target of keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit),” one media report says.
Some of the world’s major oil-producing countries are decidedly at odds with the science-based findings of the levels to which fossil fuels need to be reduced consistent with the target of keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
The 2021 Production Gap Report, now in its 3rd edition since 2019, measures the gap between governments’ planned production of coal, oil, and gas and the global production levels consistent with meeting the Paris Agreement temperature limits.
With regard to living within the limits of planned fossil fuel production levels in the period ahead, reports focus on major fossil fuel-producing countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
“Country profiles show that most of these governments continue to provide significant policy support for fossil fuel production,” another media report says.
