Wednesday, December 6th, 2023 - TrickJarrett.com: Semper Ad Meliora

How a Fossil Fuel Treaty Could Support the Paris Agreement

Inside Climate News is among the websites I subscribe to in my RSS feed. And largely I love their coverage. This headline got my attention, worrying that the fossil fuel lobbyists had gotten to them. But I ended up enjoying this article and getting a better insight into what could be useful and helpful. Will it ultimately be used for good? I honestly doubt it, but it raised an excellent point regarding that we're sort of going into this backwards by trying to lessen demand which puts no cap on production.

From the intro:

What we’re seeing here at COP28 is that fossil fuels have finally been dragged center stage, in part because of the fossil fuel treaty campaign around the world for the last three years raising awareness about the fact that we are not aligning the production of fossil fuels with Paris goals. Right now we are on track to produce 110 percent more oil, gas, and coal between now and 2030 than we can ever burn if we want to meet the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

We need new agreements between countries on who gets to produce what fossil fuels and how much, and for how long. We need a plan that’s based on equity and fairness to align production with a global carbon budget. And we’re going to need new financial mechanisms and cooperation to support countries in, first of all, stopping the expansion of fossil fuels, and then secondly, winding down the production of fossil fuels.

There are so many countries today that are expanding the production of fossil fuels just to feed their debt. So some of the areas that are being looked at under a fossil fuel treaty include debt relief or tax agreements and trade agreements in order to make stopping the expansion and production and winding down production viable for many countries around the world.

From the first actual Question and Answer of the article after the intro:

There’s something intuitive about the notion that we should be producing less fossil fuel. But I’ve also heard well reasoned arguments that targeting supply specifically will either be ineffective, because other countries will simply increase production to meet demand, or that if it is effective and begins to crimp supply, that it would lead to energy price spikes and volatility that would undermine political support and potentially hurt developing nations the most. What’s your response to these critiques?

Trying to phase out fossil fuels by designing policy that is only to reduce demand is like trying to cut with one half of the scissors. We need to cut both supply and demand because what we build today will be what we use tomorrow. So we’ve had 30 years of climate policy and negotiations, designed just to reduce demand. And it’s not working. It’s not working fast enough to keep us safe.

12/6/2023 9:00 am |

| Tags: climate change, paris agreement, fossil fuels, clean energy, pollution

How a Fossil Fuel Treaty Could Support the Paris Agreement

Inside Climate News is among the websites I subscribe to in my RSS feed. And largely I love their coverage. This headline got my attention, worrying that the fossil fuel lobbyists had gotten to them. But I ended up enjoying this article and getting a better insight into what could be useful and helpful. Will it ultimately be used for good? I honestly doubt it, but it raised an excellent point regarding that we're sort of going into this backwards by trying to lessen demand which puts no cap on production.

From the intro:

What we’re seeing here at COP28 is that fossil fuels have finally been dragged center stage, in part because of the fossil fuel treaty campaign around the world for the last three years raising awareness about the fact that we are not aligning the production of fossil fuels with Paris goals. Right now we are on track to produce 110 percent more oil, gas, and coal between now and 2030 than we can ever burn if we want to meet the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

We need new agreements between countries on who gets to produce what fossil fuels and how much, and for how long. We need a plan that’s based on equity and fairness to align production with a global carbon budget. And we’re going to need new financial mechanisms and cooperation to support countries in, first of all, stopping the expansion of fossil fuels, and then secondly, winding down the production of fossil fuels.

There are so many countries today that are expanding the production of fossil fuels just to feed their debt. So some of the areas that are being looked at under a fossil fuel treaty include debt relief or tax agreements and trade agreements in order to make stopping the expansion and production and winding down production viable for many countries around the world.

From the first actual Question and Answer of the article after the intro:

There’s something intuitive about the notion that we should be producing less fossil fuel. But I’ve also heard well reasoned arguments that targeting supply specifically will either be ineffective, because other countries will simply increase production to meet demand, or that if it is effective and begins to crimp supply, that it would lead to energy price spikes and volatility that would undermine political support and potentially hurt developing nations the most. What’s your response to these critiques?

Trying to phase out fossil fuels by designing policy that is only to reduce demand is like trying to cut with one half of the scissors. We need to cut both supply and demand because what we build today will be what we use tomorrow. So we’ve had 30 years of climate policy and negotiations, designed just to reduce demand. And it’s not working. It’s not working fast enough to keep us safe.

12/6/2023 10:55 am |

| Tags: climate change, paris agreement, fossil fuels, clean energy, pollution