Last November 18th ended the 22nd Conference of Parties (COP). The resulted proclamation is just one more commitment, one more wish, one more idea. No obligation, nor penalty planned in case of non respect of objectives and commitments. Surely it is a worldwide political commitment but that committed only those who believe in it.
Hypocrisy reaches climax in the proclamation its self : « We, Heads of State, Government, and Delegations […] call for urgently raising ambition and strengthening cooperation amongst ourselves to close the gap between current emissions trajectories and the pathway needed to meet the long-term temperature goals of the Paris Agreement » (2). I thought naively that they were supposed to be the politicians and the representatives...
In the same time, IEA published in its new yearly reference document that « the 2°C pathway is very tough: the road to 1.5°C goes through uncharted territory ». The agency also mentions that public subsidies to fossil energies were nearly $500 billions in the world in 2014 (3). To those major challenges, the COP22 didn’t bring any answer.
Sources:
(1) Marrakech proclamation: http://cop22.ma/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/marrakech_action_proclamation.pdf
(2) World Energy Outlook 2016, International Energy Agency: http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/publications/weo/WEO2016Factsheet.pdf
(3) International Energy Agency: http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/resources/energysubsidies/
