Egypt’s COP27 climate summit comes at a ‘watershed moment’

Cairo, Egypt (AFP):

Leaders of a divided world meet in Egypt on Monday tasked with taming the terrifying juggernaut of global warming as they face gale-force geopolitical crosswinds, including the war in Ukraine and economic turmoil.

Expectations are high from a world justifiably anxious about its climate-addled future as deadly floods, heat waves and storms across the planet track worst-case climate scenarios.

The November 6-18 meeting — COP27 — in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh will also be dominated by the growing need of virtually blameless poor nations for money to cope not just with future impacts, but those already claiming lives and devastating economies.

Casting an even longer shadow on negotiations in Egypt than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many experts say, is the further erosion of Sino-US relations, which in the past have anchored breakthroughs in climate diplomacy.

“We are at a watershed moment,” said Li Shuo, a Beijing-based policy analyst with Greenpeace International. “If the politics are so bad that the world’s two biggest emitters won’t talk to each other, we’re not going to get to 1.5C.”

US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are set to attend the G20 summit in Bali days before the talks in Egypt close. Should the two leaders meet, “that dynamic would play back to Sharm el-Sheikh”, said Li.

Last week the UN warned that “there is no credible pathway in place” for capping the rise in global temperatures under the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

While worst-case projections are less dire than a decade ago, current policies would still see Earth’s surface warm a catastrophic 2.8C, and no less than 2.4C even if countries meet all their carbon-cutting pledges under the Paris treaty.