Speaker 1: (00:01)
With the cop 26 climate conference behind us, global leaders are moving forward to address the planet's biggest climate issues yet, despite the urgency of the meeting, critics have cast doubt on the political will of global leaders to actually commit to the goals of the conference. Still, whatever progress is made will have a significant impact on California. Joining me with more is David Victor, professor of international relations at the school of global policy and strategy at UC San Diego. He attended the conference in Glasgow, David, welcome back to the program.
Speaker 2: (00:34)
It's great to be back.
Speaker 1: (00:36)
So this climate conference was especially important to remind us why
Speaker 2: (00:41)
It was important because this is the first time that countries have updated their pledges since 2015, when they all got together in Paris and set up this new framework for cooperation on climate change. And so they they've issued new pledges, they all did that before the conference. And this was a chance to look at those budgets.
Speaker 1: (00:57)
And there's been a lot of talk about how the goals of cop 26 were watered down or not fully realized. Was this conference a success in your opinion?
Speaker 2: (01:07)
I think you can judge success two ways and part success can be judged by what happens with just the deadline of having 120 heads of state show up all the spotlight and so on. And that sense it was a huge success, lots of announcements. And it's in fact, the most interesting ones are from business. A lot of commitments, also a lot of noise, not quite clear, you know, what's real, what's not real, but in that sense, a big success. And the other way to judge success is around the diplomacy. And that's just a grinding process. Cause you have to get the consensus with every country that's there. And that's mostly mostly where the news media is focused. And in that sense, it was kind of what it was expected. They watered down the final agreement, they got agreement where agreement was possible and then they live for another day.
Speaker 1: (01:45)
What are some of the major milestones of this conference?
Speaker 2: (01:49)
Well, I think the most important milestone diplomatically was that you had essentially every government on the planet issue, these new pledges. And so as of today, about 70% of the world emissions are coming from countries that have a pledge to stop those emissions to zero in effect by mid-century. So that's a, that's a really big deal. They also had, uh, uh, uh, some, some diplomatic requirements. There were some parts of the Paris agreement that were not yet finalized. And so that had to be done. And then one of the most controversial issues and, and a big priority was, was money that developing countries have expected a hundred billion dollars per year of new money from there from richer countries. And they only got about 80 of it. And so they're upset about that, understandably. And they're also upset about how that money is being spent.
Speaker 1: (02:30)
Global leaders fall short in any significant ways in terms of the goals they agreed on.
Speaker 2: (02:37)
I think they mostly delivered on the goals that they at least said they were going to do. I think the big question right now is following up is do we believe these pledges, you know, it's pretty easy for a leader to come in and say, we're going to stop emissions to zero by mid-century, but almost nobody has a real plan for that. And I think from the developing countries, point of view, this question of money of how are they going to be in particular dealing with the fact that climate is already warming it's 1.2, two degrees above pre-industrial levels continues to accelerate. How are they going to deal with that? And some of these countries literally will be underwater. They have very emotive speeches about that. It's a big deal and they're looking for help. And that, that part of it, they really left without a clear plan. And, and a lot of trust I think is at a pretty low level.
Speaker 1: (03:21)
Um, can you tell us about some of the policy decisions that could have a strong impact locally here in California?
Speaker 2: (03:29)
Well, here in California, we're of course not going to sit waiting for an edict from the United nations system we're off working on deep decarbonization, cutting our emissions essentially to zero. I think what really matters here is that this helps put a lot more pressure on the need to act. And in particular puts a lot more pressure on the United States to be a leader and with everything that's going wrong in Washington right now, it's really the states and localities that are on the front lines of that. And here in San Diego, we are, we're doing a huge amount. And so I think that kind of pressure it's going to, it's going to put a, uh, put a spotlight on our model and also give us a, uh, a receptive audience around the world as we learn how to make big cuts in emissions. And hopefully it can help others do the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: (04:11)
No one, we spoke at the beginning of the conference. You said our state's key role is to really gain fellow, uh, followership rather. Uh, can you remind us what you mean by that? And if you think that was achieved?
Speaker 2: (04:23)
Well, I think first California has less than 1% of global emissions. And so we are embarked. We have embarked on this incredible journey to eliminate emissions from our electric power sector from the rest of the California economy. But if we are successful, that's only 1% of global emissions. And so the goal is to get the rest of the world doing similar things. What I see as more countries looking to the United States as a leader, not only the United States, there's a lot happening in Europe and also skeptical of what's happening at the federal government level. And so they're looking to the states in particular and the most important thing that we're doing here in California is learning how to make big reductions in our electric power system, because that's going to be vital for the world worldwide effort to cut emissions. So I see lot, a lot of attention to that issue. And how do you keep the lights on? How much does it cost? Things like that?
Speaker 1: (05:09)
The absence of a few key leaders made headlines early on in the summit, most notably from China. And what can you tell us about that and how will it impact global cooperation to fight climate change?
Speaker 2: (05:21)
Well, it's one of the most important geopolitical questions right now. The Chinese leader was not there. The Russian leader was not there. Um, there are a lot of things going on inside China. The is becoming more insular. President Xi from China has not left the country in two years. He didn't go to the G 20 meeting and Rome the weekend before the big conference. And so this is a big concern because China is turning inward. The United States, frankly, is turning inward. It's one of the areas where there's a bipartisan agreement on foreign policy is to kind of beat up on China. And yet when you look at the history of innovation and deployment of new technologies in the energy space, a lot of it has been from globalization of manufacturing, like, like solar cells and batteries. And so we've got to find some way politically through that, but the political environment is very, very toxic. The two countries issued a kind of surprise communique a few days ago saying they're going to cooperate, but there wasn't really any content in there. Um, uh, other than things that they were already agreed to, uh, president Biden and president Xi are gonna meet, uh, very soon and hopefully just lower the temperature a little bit on the relationship and, and set up some working groups of the two countries can find at least some productive way forward.
Speaker 1: (06:26)
And ultimately, D do you think there's a discrepancy in terms of our scientific understanding versus the political will to combat a climate change?
Speaker 2: (06:35)
I think absolutely the scientists are convinced that we should be stopping warming at something like 1.5 degrees. We're now at 1.2 and cruising ahead right now, and they've been convinced of that for a long time. Uh, the economists have found various ways, at least in an ideal world to, to cut emissions at a reasonable cost. Politics are really, really hard. And I think that's, what's really key here is that because of all the announcements that happen, not only at cop 26 and Glasgow, but a lot of other places and, and demonstrations like we have here in California of how to actually cut emissions, which you're seeing as the political interest groups that want to cut emissions are getting stronger politically, that doesn't happen quickly, but it's ineffective rewriting the political landscape and making, making big deals more possible in a way that wasn't true. A few years ago,
Speaker 1: (07:19)
You know, temperature, projection based commitments were made at cop 26, but not as far as experts had hoped. What can you tell us about that?
Speaker 2: (07:28)
Well, the big promise was to, to keep 1.5 degrees alive, keep alive the idea that we're going to stop global warming at 1.5 degrees. And that's really important to a lot of the most vulnerable countries. The science suggests that that's a good, that's a reasonable goal. And so on what we've learned is that it's easy for countries collectively to pledge. They're going to stop warming at 1.5 degrees. So long as nobody individually says, this is exactly what we have to do. And so my expectation for a long time has been that we will continue to overplay edge and not deliver. And that means one more thing for us locally, which is that the whole whole world, including San Diego is in for quite a lot of climate change. And so we need to not believe these politicians when they say they're going to stop warming at 1.5 degrees. We need to plan for scenarios where warming is much more intense
Speaker 1: (08:13)
And, and quickly, is there a way to frame the end of cop 26 in a positive light?
Speaker 2: (08:19)
I think the single most important thing that happened, uh, was that corporate leaders were there in big numbers, made big pledges, and they're going to be held accountable. And that's a big change.
Speaker 1: (08:29)
I've been speaking with David Victor, professor of international relations at the school of global policy and strategy at UC San Diego. David, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: (08:40)
Always a pleasure. Thank you.
