Did the Paris Climate Agreement Achieve Anything?

Within hours of his inauguration, President Joe Biden re-joined the US to the Paris Climate Accord reversing the previous administration’s love of the fossil fuel industry. During the Trump years, the US took a step back from climate friendly policies and renewable innovation. The Trump administration’s pandering to Big Oil included reducing electric car incentives, relaxing environmental laws and lending his ear to Big Oil lobbyists, who were also often campaign contributors. These actions set the US back in the race to reduce carbon emissions. This period in American political history is now over.

Biden’s green agenda with immediate executive orders overturned Trump’s regressive approach. The Paris Climate agreement is an accelerator to electric car transition and a further major threat to Big Oil. Under the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) the Paris Climate Agreement is a legally binding treaty aimed at reducing CO2 emissions and keeping the global warming increase to below 2 degrees Celsius of the pre-industrial age.

The agreement works on five-year cycles of increasingly ambitious climate recovery steps. Although the agreement was signed in 2015, each country had until 2020 to present plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to reach agreements goals. From 2024 each country will have to produce transparent reports on actions taken and emissions reduction. These nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are up to each country to decide on which actions reduce emissions. Whilst each country has a different set of challenges, depending on energy mix and reliance on fossil fuels, almost all have begun to introduce a phase out of internal combustion mobility.

For Big Oil, the Paris Agreement is bad news. A further attack on its business model by setting increasingly stricter emissions targets and pollution controls. Unlike the failed Kyoto accord, the Paris Agreement is the planet’s best hope at a sustainable future as time is running out on global warming. The US withdrew from the agreement in 2017 citing grounds of competitive advantage. Ironically the US was already on track to meet its agreement targets, however political will evaporated following Trumps election and the US regressed to the energy and mobility policies of the past.

There are no penalties for breaking the Paris Agreement, it was built upon the mutual acceptance of the great global challenge facing humanity. The reasons for breaking with the agreement were dubious and unfounded. Trump made claims such as ‘the agreement blocks the development of clean coal in the US’ and the agreement would cost Americans millions of jobs by 2025 and cut trillions off the US economy by putting the abundant US energy reserves under lock and key. Stating the US would be at a permanent disadvantage and ignoring the benefits of a clean tech shift and the economic growth from new energy technologies, electric cars and clean air health savings, he unilaterally withdrew from the agreement.

Big Oil lobbyists claimed the US was at a competitive disadvantage to other countries and argued that a level playing field needed to be created by leaving the agreement. The Big Oil majors spent $1bn on misleading climate related branding and lobbying since the agreement was signed, according to Global InfluenceMap. President Trump’s re-election campaign was flooded with Big Oil donations. Kelcy Warren, an oil pipeline billionaire, hosted a fundraiser, which Trump attended, raising $10m. Fossil fuel industry support in the White House fluctuates from administration to administration. Reagan removed the solar panels on the roof of the Whitehouse shortly after gaining office, while Bush Junior was a strident supporter of Big Oil.

With the Paris Agreement out of the way, oil companies approved over $50bn, in 2018/19, on new exploration projects, according to think tank, Carbon Tracker. In contrast to this, the oil companies continue to make ambitions carbon reduction statements in shiny annual sustainability statements. BP for example states that it’s new mission is to produce low carbon oil and gas in line with the Paris Agreement whilst continuing to make massive investment in new fossil fuel projects. New chemical, oil plastics plants and oil infrastructure are planned in places like Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ where a high concentration of oil refineries and petrochemical plants already exist. Cancer Alley is a predominantly African American and poor community – more easily bullied than affluent white suburbs and their NIMBY (not in my back yard) resident groups.

What was once a fringe subject, climate change, is going mainstream in the public’s consciousness; it is slowly becoming unacceptable to doubt the science. Smoking in a public restaurant now is illegal and completely unacceptable in today’s society, yet driving a heavy petrol or, worse diesel, polluting car down a public street is still largely accepted or ignored.  Big Oil and related industries are busy promoting three broad plans in their corporate boardrooms; 1. Sweating the existing oil assets they have for as long as possible, 2. Genuine divestment into clean tech and energy alternatives but also, unfortunately 3. Delivering well-crafted public messaging to confuse the public and wash their hands of their ill-gotten gain. This is known as Greenwashing, but that is the subject of another blog.

Of course the topical conference for this year is the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP26, being held in Glasgow from 31st October until the 12th November.

The Paris Agreement was created during COP21 held in 2015 in Paris (obviously).

I will finish this blog with a direct quote from the COP26 website https://ukcop26.org/

“Glasgow is the moment for countries to update their plans

The run up to this year’s summit in Glasgow is the moment (delayed by a year due to the pandemic) when countries update their plans for reducing emissions.

But that’s not all. The commitments laid out in Paris did not come close to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, and the window for achieving this is closing.

The decade out to 2030 will be crucial.

So as momentous as Paris was, countries must go much further than they did even at that historic summit in order to keep the hope of holding temperature rises to 1.5 alive. COP26 needs to be decisive.”