Another climate summit has mercifully ended. As with past summits, nothing of substance happened. The United States did not participate, meaning that the Trump administration technically could not thwart any attempt to block meaningful decision-making, but that was no problem for the Trump gang as Saudi Arabia was there to pick up the ball.

Any thought as to whether to laugh or cry seems rather quaint, given that environmental concerns were largely absent as is usual practice with these gatherings. Laughing does seem inappropriate. Anger seems a much better option than crying, although the latter is understood. 

First, however, let us get the climate summit’s final statement out of the way before we work our way through the annual catalog of the vast distance between summit “actions” and what is necessary. Touchingly titling the statement issued at the end of the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (as COP30 is formally known) as “Uniting humanity in a global mobilization against climate change,” the assembled governments “acknowledged” that “climate change is a common concern of humankind,” that everyone possess “the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment” and that the governments should be “emphasizing the importance of conserving, protecting and restoring nature and ecosystems towards achieving the Paris Agreement temperature goal, including through enhanced efforts towards halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 in accordance with Article 5 of the Paris Agreement.” We’ll pause here to note that, under Article 5, the world’s governments “are encouraged to take action to implement and support” agreements reached in 2015, which include holding global warming increases in temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Encouraged, not required.

To return to the COP30 document, there are celebrations of past agreements, more acknowledgements, recalling of past pledges and commendations of previous agreements. The text, for example, “Recognizes the need for urgent action and support for achieving deep, rapid and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5 °C pathways.” But what actions were taken to implement these ideals? You will search in vain for that. The closest we get is where the text declares it “Decides to convene a high-level ministerial round table to reflect upon the implementation of the new collective quantified goal, including the quantitative and qualitative elements related to the provision of finance.” Well, that will shock governments and fossil fuel companies into action! And I can get you a nice discount on the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.

As per usual, lofty goals were set with no enforcement mechanism, with much back-patting for past agreements despite a lack of implementation. After the previous two climate summits were held in countries dependent on fossil fuel extraction, that the just-concluded COP30 was held in the Amazonian city of Belém, Brazil, was supposed to have been symbolic. Of what we might ask, as fossil fuel lobbyists and governments dependent on extracting every drop of their fossil fuels fought the same battles with results similar to past years. Indigenous activists were able to demonstrate at the summit, a change from the past two, but, again, no more than a symbol.

A brief recap of past summits: Last year’s COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, concluded with an agreement that more access to finance, including loans, would be nice and that they will gladly check on the world’s progress in 2030. COP28 in the United Arab Emirates ended with the world’s governments “encouraged” to “transition away” from fossil fuels while promoting finance capital as the savior. COP27 in Egypt ended with “requests” to “revisit and strengthen” 2030 climate targets. Oh please consider stopping your environmental destruction if it’s not too inconvenient. That was preceded by COP26 in Glasgow failing to enact any enforcement mechanisms; COP25 in Madrid concluding with an announcement of two more years of roundtables; COP24 in Katowice, Poland, promoting coal; and COP23 in Bonn ending with a promise that people will get together and talk some more.

Fossil fuel interests again flex their muscles

As last year there was considerable note of the large number of fossil fuel representatives from fossil fuel companies, the solution apparently was to disguise attendees. Transparency International reported that more than half of the “participants in national delegations either did not disclose the type of affiliation they have or selected a vague category such as ‘Guest’ or ‘Other’.” Not that being coy about representation is necessary to achieve the goals of fossil fuel extractors; regardless of the affiliation of individual delegates, Saudi Arabian representatives led a bloc of Arab states in thwarting any attempt to achieve a meaningful conclusion. The United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, was widely reported to single out Saudi Arabia as the lead obstructor. The Financial Times reported that European officials “also said that Saudi Arabia had been more vehement in stating its positions this year than at previous climate summits.” Perhaps the Saudis felt the need to lobby harder since the Trump gang wouldn’t be there to do some of the dirty work.

Because consensus is necessary to reach decisions at the climate summits, oil-producing countries have an effective veto. A paper issued by the Climate Social Science Network states that Saudi Arabia “has had an outsized role in undermining progress at global climate negotiations, year after year.” The paper notes that “Undermining science is a core strategy employed by Saudi Arabian envoys who contest new climate science at [international gatherings]” and Saudi delegations are led by Riyadh’s Ministry of Energy, which is closely linked with the Saudi state oil company Aramco. Of course, we should have no illusions that the Saudis are lone wolves; they are merely the most energetic at disruption.

The environmental news site DeSmog, for example, reported that the New York public-relations firm Edelman lobbied the Brazilian hosts of COP30 “to choose one of its oil and gas clients to help power the conference, even as it was gearing up to serve as an adviser at the talks aimed at curbing the use of fossil fuels.” Edelman is reported to have a decades-long history of representing ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron. The PR firm also represents the Brazilian state oil company, Petrobras. Edelman, DeSmog reports, had an $835,000 contract with COP30 organizers. ExxonMobil and Chevron, meanwhile, sent 13 executives to COP30 and ExxonMobil’s chief executive officer, Darren Woods, was a speaker at several side events; in an interview he said crude oil and hydrocarbons were “going to play a critical role in everybody’s life for a long time to come.”

Overall, more than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists participated in COP30, DeSmog reports.

They seem to have an effect. One negotiator from an unnamed Global South country, expressing the frustrations of talks going nowhere, said to a Guardian reporter, “Sometimes I feel that this process has lost its humanity. Sometimes it’s like we are arguing with robots. … Just because we do not have money, does not mean we should not be listened to.”

Among those not impressed at COP30’s passing the buck is Harjeet Singh, founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation in India, who termed the Belém conference as “the deadliest talk show ever.” The “theater of delay” was intended “solely to avoid the actions that matter—committing to a just transition away from fossil fuels and putting money on the table,” he said in an interview with Inside Climate News. Mr. Singh is an advisor to the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, which is an attempt to secure binding agreements to take necessary measures to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees C, in part through banning new coal, oil and gas projects. Thousands of organizations have signed on, as have 18 national governments. Other than Colombia and Pakistan, all the government signatories are small island nations, who know first-hand what a threat global warming is. Unfortunately, no country that is a major contributor to global warming has signed on.

It is not as if there should be no urgency in tackling the problem of global warming and associated environmental issues. An analysis conducted by ProPublica and The Guardian forecast that there will be 1.3 million extra deaths from temperature extremes in the next 80 years if the Trump administration’s policies are continued, with the “vast majority” of these extra deaths outside the United States. The calculations, which are based on several peer-reviewed scientific papers, don’t include indirect deaths to be caused from global warming. The report said, “The estimate reflects deaths from heat-related causes, such as heatstroke and the exacerbation of existing illnesses, minus lives saved by reduced exposure to cold. It does not include the massive number of deaths expected from the broader effects of the climate crisis, such as droughts, floods, wars, vector-borne diseases, hurricanes, wildfires and reduced crop yields.”

The number of extra deaths that could result from all human-caused emissions in the next 80 years if current policies aren’t reversed is 83 million, the report concludes.

The Paris goal is almost out of reach

Future problems from Earth continuing to grow warmer are not limited to the basic matter of higher temperatures and the effects on people unaccustomed to more severe heat. Parts of the Earth’s surface could literally become uninhabitable. As the climate grows hotter, there are places in South Asia and the Middle East that could become so unbearable due to a combination of heat and humidity that the human body would be unable to cool itself off, with exposure to such conditions leading to death in about six hours. There already have been a few instances of such conditions arising, albeit for an hour or two, not long enough for lethality for someone healthy but likely fatal to many. But somewhat less extreme conditions, which will become possible in more areas of the world, could be lethal for all but the healthiest. The limit at which all would die within six hours from extreme heat and humidity could regularly occur in South Asia and the Middle East by the third quarter of the 21st century under present worst-case scenarios, according to three climate scientists who published a report on this possibility.

Although that scenario need not become reality (but would if current trends in greenhouse gases continue), there will be plenty of disasters awaiting. Climate Action Tracker, after each global climate summit, provides a snapshot of where the climate is going. Under the “optimistic” scenario of full implementation of all announced targets, the global temperature will rise 1.9 degrees C. above the pre-industrial average by 2100, and the rise could be as high as 2.4 degrees. In other words, a wide miss of the 1.5 degree Paris goal. Based on current policies, global temperatures will rise by a catastrophic 2.6 degrees, and possibly more than 3. To reiterate, those targets are promises with no mechanism of enforcement.

“Almost none of the 40 governments the [Climate Action Tracker] analyzes have updated their 2030 target, which is critical to keep warming levels below 1.5°C, nor have they set out the kind of action in their new 2035 targets that would change the warming outlook,” Climate Action Tracker said in its report. The chief executive officer of Climate Analytics, Bill Hare, added, “The world is running out of time to avoid a dangerous overshoot of the 1.5°C limit. Delayed action has already led to higher cumulative emissions, and new evidence suggests the climate system may be more sensitive than previously thought. Without rapid, deep emissions cuts — over 50% by 2030 — overshooting 1.5°C becomes ever more likely, with severe consequences for people and ecosystems.”

To put some concrete numbers on how much further necessary reductions to greenhouse-gas emissions are needed, Climate Action Tracker reports that emissions are expected to reach 53 to 57 gigatons of emissions by 2030, whereas holding emissions to the level necessary to keep temperatures rising above 1.5 degrees requires a fall to 27 gigatons by 2030 with further cuts beyond that level. A gigaton is 1 million metric tons; a metric ton equals 2.2 times the “short” ton of the imperial weight system used in the United States. “Governments must urgently strengthen or overachieve 2030 targets, implement robust policies, and ensure transparency and accountability,” Climate Action Tracker wrote.

Despite the increasing urgency, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and cement will set a record in 2025. And although the rate of increase of greenhouse-gas emissions is slowing, Earth’s ability to absorb those emissions is declining. Those “carbon sinks” are an estimated 15 percent weaker than they were a decade earlier. The amount of carbon dioxide and equivalents that the atmosphere can take before the 1.5 degree goal is breached is approaching, a Carbon Brief report states. “The remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5C is virtually exhausted and is equivalent to only four years of current emissions,” Carbon Brief wrote. “Carbon budgets to limit warming to 1.7C and 2C would similarly be used up in 12 and 25 years, respectively.”

The world groans as the wealthy play

That is nothing new. A 2016 report found that even if greenhouse gases had ceased to have been thrown into the atmosphere then, decades of further global warming were likely because the world’s oceans are reaching their capacity to be a carbon sink. This report, a compilation produced by dozens of climate scientists from around the world based on more than 500 peer-reviews papers, found that for the previous four decades, the world’s oceans had absorbed 93 percent of the enhanced heating. But the accumulated heat is not permanently stored; it can be released back into the atmosphere, potentially providing significant feedback that would accelerate global warming. The extra heat absorbed by the oceans raises ocean temperatures, with corresponding bad outcomes for aquatic life and more severe tropical cyclones. Ocean absorption of excess heat, the report said, “happens at the cost of profound alterations to the ocean’s physics and chemistry that lead especially to ocean warming and acidification, and consequently sea-level rise. … The problem is that we know ocean warming is driving change in the ocean — this is well documented — but the consequences of these changes decades down the line are far from clear.”

Let’s get down to specifics. The discussion of global warming has been abstract, as if humanity collectively indulges in suicidal behavior. But “humanity” is not the problem. We live in an economic system, capitalism, that requires continual growth, and that growth means more industrial activity. In turn, that economic system leads to drastically unequal wealth and power. Global South countries contribute little to greenhouse-gas buildups. Global North countries, and now China, contribute in huge amounts. Fossil fuel companies, and the banks that facilitate and invest in their production, contribute massively to greenhouse-gas emissions, and have the world’s governments in their pockets. In the United States, fossil fuel companies literally dictate (although no arm-twisting is necessary) U.S. energy policy under the Trump administration. And those possessing extreme wealth contribute vastly more than even middle-income people, much less the world’s abundant poor.

A recent report put out by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute found that the world’s wealthiest 0.1% burn carbon at 400 times the rate of the world’s poorest 10%. And that divide is getting bigger — the richest 0.1% increased their carbon footprint by 32 percent since 1990 while the poorest 50% of humanity actually decreased theirs by 3%. The report said:

“The super-rich are not just overconsuming carbon, but also actively investing in and profiting from the most polluting corporations. Oxfam’s research finds that the average billionaire produces 1.9 million tonnes of [carbon dioxide equivalent] a year through their investments. These billionaires would have to circumnavigate the world almost 10,000 times in their private jets to emit this much. Almost 60% of billionaire investments are classified as being in high climate impact sectors such as oil or mining, meaning their investments emit two and a half times more than an average investment in the S&P Global 1,200. The emissions of the investment portfolios of just 308 billionaires total more than the combined emissions of 118 countries.”

How does that translate into real-world effects? The report stated, “The emissions of the richest 1% are enough to cause an estimated 1.3 million heat-related deaths by the end of the century, as well as $44 trillion of economic damage to low- and lower-middle-income countries by 2050.”

Our descendants, living in a world of flooded coastal cities, agricultural disruptions, severe weather outbreaks, massive dislocations and environmental disasters, are not likely to find the ability of a minuscule elite living in the past grabbing massive profits to have been a good tradeoff for the world they will have inherited. Yet another reminder that an economy built for massive accumulation by a tiny elite in a world in which corporations can offload their costs onto the environment rather than an economy built for human need based on sustainability has massive costs.

Fredric Jameson is no longer here to remind us that imagining the end of the world is easier than imagining the end of capitalism, but the just concluded COP29 climate summit has refreshed our memory. Although securing profits is the primary goal of fossil fuel corporations along with the governments that love them, and the end of the world merely a collateral-damage byproduct, the COP29 climate summit once again showed just where priorities lie.

The very location of the summit, Azerbaijan, a country in which oil and gas bring in about 90 percent of its export earnings, is enough to determine what will be deemed a priority, no matter the cheerful statements on the COP29 website.

The 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (as COP29 is formally known) ended with agreements that fall far short of what is necessary to prevent runaway global warming and with no mechanism for ensuring that those inadequate pledges will be met. In other words, business as usual.

This was the second straight climate summit to be held in a major fossil fuel producer, after last year’s COP28 in the United Arab Emirates. That one ended with the world’s governments “encouraged” to “transition away” from fossil fuels while promoting finance capital as the savior. Not to be confused with the achievements of prior climate summits. The 2022 COP27 in Egypt ended with “requests” to “revisit and strengthen” 2030 climate targets. Oh please consider stopping your environmental destruction if it’s not too inconvenient. That was preceded by COP26 in Glasgow failing to enact any enforcement mechanisms; COP25 in Madrid concluding with an announcement of two more years of roundtables; COP24 in Katowice, Poland, promoting coal; and COP23 in Bonn ending with a promise that people will get together and talk some more.

You get the idea. And there were more “decisions” at COP29. For example — try not to jump out of your seat in excitement upon reading this — the summit leaders will “undertake a special assessment of access to climate finance at the twelfth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (2030) with a view to assessing progress in relation to the matters referred to in paragraphs 21-24 above and identifying further opportunities for enhancing access to climate finance in accordance with the aim of the new collective quantified goal and in line with Article 9, paragraph 9, of the Paris Agreement.” The world’s governments also “Decide to periodically take stock of the implementation of this decision as part of the global stocktake and to initiate deliberations on the way forward prior to 2035, including through a review of this decision in 2030.”

To translate those “decisions” into plain language, the summit concluded with an agreement that more access to finance, including loans, would be nice and that they will gladly check on the world’s progress six years from now, in 2030. Worse, even last year’s goal to “transition away” from fossil fuels — whatever that might mean in practice — was deemed too controversial and thus was jettisoned from final texts, reportedly due to heavy arm-twisting by Saudi Arabia.

Not much of a sense of urgency there. As to the role of finance, it would be useful for us to remember that from 2015, when the Paris Climate Accord was signed, through 2022, 60 of the world’s biggest banks invested US$4.6 trillion in fossil fuel projects. Four United States-based banks were the worst offenders, according to a report by seven environmental organizations, and three Canadian banks are among the top dozen in the world for financing fossil fuels. Each of these are big contributors to fracking and tar sands production. It’s not only companies like Saudi Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

If you have money, you can shift the responsibility

The slogan emblazoned on Azerbaijan’s official COP29 website is “In Solidarity for a Green World.” If by “green” is meant money, then that slogan means what it says. On the page listing the climate summit’s accomplishments, the figure of $1.3 trillion is shown as a new commitment. What does this $1.3 trillion consist of? The largest portion, $1 trillion, represents “Financial flows from compliant carbon markets” that may reach that total by 2050. The remaining $300 billion represents a yearly goal of money sent by developed countries to developing countries to subsidize the latter’s work to counteract the effects on them due to global warming.

Let’s take the first portion first. What are “Financial flows from compliant carbon markets”? That is legalistic language disguising that what is meant are so-called “carbon markets” under which polluting advanced-capitalist countries can pay lower-income countries to offset their global-warming activities rather than take measures inside their own countries. The establishment of this “carbon market” was agreed at the Paris Climate Summit in 2015 and took nine years to negotiate. The consummation of those talks does not mean that potential $1 trillion trading value will be money well spent.

In an interview with Inside Climate News, Alden Meyer, a senior consultant at E3G, which describes itself as an “independent climate change think tank,” explained what was agreed:  

“It’s called Article Six of the Paris Agreement, and there’s two major components of it. One is setting up a new sort of international body to allow trading of so-called offsets or credits, where a country that has a hard time meeting the commitments it’s made in their own country might make investments in another country where reductions would be considerably cheaper, and they could count those reductions against their own commitments, even though they weren’t happening in their own territories. … [Carbon trading] benefit[s] richer countries because … they can often be less expensive than making the investments in your own backyard. And so that’s another concern that some developing countries have had about this. They say, basically, you’re taking the benefits of the low hanging fruit in our countries when it comes to emission reductions and using it to avoid cracking down on polluters in your own country.”

So more burden will fall on Global South countries despite the fact that the Global North has contributed vastly more greenhouse-gas emissions to the atmosphere. Even when Global North countries reduce their domestic production of greenhouse gases, their exports have often more than made up the difference. For example, Climate Action Tracker reports that, from 2010 to 2022, United States exported emissions increased 216 percent, Canada’s increased 52 percent and Australia’s increased 40 percent, although Norwegian and British exported emissions have remained stable during this time frame.

They can pledge but they don’t have to pay

And then there is the $300 billion per year commitment to help Global South countries mitigate the effects of global warming. Those countries had been asking for $1 trillion per year from the developed countries of the Global North, but the latter refused to commit to any total until nearly the end of the summit. Two blocs of countries, the Least Developed Countries and the Alliance of Small Island States, are reported to have at one point walked out on the negotiations in frustration. Further, objections from countries including Bolivia, India and Nigeria were overridden, with a last-minute agreement pushed through without the objections getting a hearing. The final communiqué trumpeted the fact that the $300 billion figure tripled previous commitments, but sidestepped that the $300 billion are pledges with no mechanism for fulfillment. Previous similar commitments have either not been fulfilled or have been done only after several years.

Regardless, developing countries saw the $300 billion figure, less than one-third of what they see as needed, as insulting. A United Nations summary of the summit admitted that “India’s representative strongly denounced the new goal, calling it a ‘paltry sum’ and emphasizing, ‘We seek a much higher ambition from the developed countries [and the amount agreed] does not inspire trust that we will come out of this grave problem of climate change.’ ” Sierra Leone said the $300 billion pledge showed “a lack of goodwill” and a representative from a group of small island nations noted, according to the UN summary, “what a very different boat our vulnerable countries are in, compared to the developed countries,” adding that “We are literally sinking.”

The continuing result of the world’s most powerful countries and the countries most dependent on fossil fuel exports catering to fossil fuel company profits is that global temperatures are well on their way to soaring well beyond the 1.5 degree Celsius Paris goal and the 2 degree C. outer limit of avoiding a catastrophic runaway climate. Global temperatures are already approaching 1.5 degrees C. above the pre-industrial average and the past year’s parade of hurricanes, droughts and floods demonstrate a climate already becoming dangerously extreme. Even if all pledges for 2030 were met — and there are no enforcement mechanisms to ensure that — global temperatures are forecast to rise 2.6 degrees C. from the pre-industrial average, well beyond the Paris goal and the outer atmospheric limit; even a 1.5 degree rise will surely be destructive.

More ominously, the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency portends a sharp reversal of even the tepid U.S. government’s attempts to address global warming, and the likely ascension of a Conservative government in Canada in 2025 will result in another disastrous reversal given not only that Canadian fossil fuels reserves are significant but that much of it is in the particularly dirty tar sands. The last time there was a Conservative government in Ottawa speaking against tar-sand exploitation was considered a crime. Further, it is worrying that the Conservative government of Alberta, the province where the tar sands are located, has busied itself with denying global warming exists. A report in DeSmog dryly notes:

“Rather than fossil fuel-driven CO2 levels being a grave danger to critical planetary systems, [a party] resolution stated, “the Earth needs more CO2 to support life and to increase plant yields, both of which contribute to the Health and Prosperity [sic] of all Albertans. Almost all delegates voted in favour of wording erroneously stating that current CO2 levels, at 420 parts per million, are “near the lowest level in over 1,000 [sic] years.” This figure is off the mark by about three million years — an era when the Earth was on average about three degrees warmer (up to 20 degrees hotter at higher latitudes) and sea levels were 25 metres higher.”

Maybe we should count the Pentagon as a country

Such resolutions would be too at variance with reality even for COP29 delegates. But their inability to deal with global warming with sufficient seriousness is not only embodied in the results detailed above but that militarism was never mentioned, much less discussed. The U.S. military is “the single largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world,” according to a Brown University Watson Institute report. These emissions are larger than many mid-sized industrial countries, such as Sweden and Denmark, and greater than all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from iron and steel. The Pentagon, since the 1970s, consistently accounts for nearly 80 percent of total U.S. government energy consumption. The Brown University report says:

“Why does the US military consume so much energy? First, the Pentagon’s fighting ‘tooth’ employs equipment that guzzles fuel at an incredible rate. The logistical ‘tail’ and the installations that support operations are also extremely fuel intensive. Even the military’s non-armored vehicles are notoriously inefficient. For instance, the approximately 60,000 HUMVEEs remaining in the US army fleet get between four to eight miles per gallon of diesel fuel.”

Russia’s war on Ukraine is also a heavy contributor to global warming, New Scientist reports, with the impact of the war causing US$32 billion in damages based on total emissions that are larger than many countries.

Nor can the work of lobbyists be discounted from the dispiriting results of COP29. More than 1,700 oil, gas and coal lobbyists were registered for the summit. But their work might not have been difficult as “Azerbaijan’s deputy energy minister and chief executive of Cop29, was caught on film agreeing to facilitate oil deals at the negotiations,” the Guardian reported. The president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, has called oil and gas “a gift from God” and made clear his intention that fossil fuel extraction will continue at high rates. Public relations companies working for oil and gas companies also attended in large numbers. Ten public-relations firms alone sent dozens of representatives, with those 10 firms holding at least 91 contracts to boost fossil fuel company reputations, according to a DeSmog report.

Earth is poised to see 2024 become the hottest year since records began, and October 2024 actually exceeded the Paris goal, coming in at 1.55 degrees above the pre-industrial average. The Caribbean Sea experienced its warmest temperature on record in October, continuing a trend of high temperatures, which contributed to a highly destructive hurricane season. “It appears unlikely Earth will again see a year in the 20th-century temperature range for many years to come, unless there is major volcanic cooling, a major geoengineering push, and/or a sustained, worldwide effort to reduce fossil-fuel emissions,” concludes Jeff Masters in the Eye on the Storm blog, essential reading for understanding global warming.

Is corporate profit really worth the destruction of Earth’s livability? Continuing business as usual will mean an effective end of the world if by “world” we mean a fully habitable planet with a climate, however variable, within human experience. Quite literally, parts of Earth’s surface could become uninhabitable by the end of the 21st century if global warming continues, separate from rising sea levels, disrupted agriculture and more severe storms. Rather than contemplate an end to capitalist business as usual, much less the end of capitalism before that economic system leads to catastrophic environmental collapse, the world’s industrialists and financiers, and the governments that cater to them, are willing to bring about an end to the world. Or perhaps they do know the consequences but calculate they will be gone before catastrophe happens.

Our descendants — living in a world of flooded cities, food shortages, resource depletion, mass species die-offs, unprecedented human migration and large numbers of people dying should business as usual continue — are not likely to believe that their ruined world would be a fair tradeoff for a handful of industrialists and financiers of the past getting obscenely rich. We live in a global economic system under which it is profitable for a handful of powerful people to profit from the destruction of the environment, and this behavior is richly rewarded. Why should it be? In a rational world, with an economic system geared toward human need rather than the profit of a few, it surely wouldn’t be.

It’s not true that humanity is committing suicide, as exemplified by the COP28 farce of a climate summit. The world’s industrialists and financiers are committing humanity to ecocide. More than ever, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

Death by capitalism. That phrase has a certain catchy feeling to it. But it’s no joke, is it? No, no joke at all.

No joke, and no vote. You didn’t get a vote on whether greenhouse gas emissions should continue at a pace to unleash catastrophically rising seas, unbearable heat, droughts, environmental destruction and an increasingly erratic climate in a cascade of cause and effect that will trigger still more climatic instability. The world’s capitalists — in particular, those who control and profit from fossil fuel corporations — have voted, did vote and will continue to vote for profits today and indifference to human and animal life tomorrow. Hurray!

The financial industry mentality has always been to squeeze every dollar out of a stone today and the hell with tomorrow. The fossil fuel industry mentality is much the same. Tomorrow increasingly looks like it will be hell. Tomorrow may not come for a few more decades, perhaps, but it does seem that tomorrow will arrive and it won’t be a pleasant time.

No more than a brief recap of the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (as COP28 is formally known) is necessary. Destined to be even more of a farce than previous climate change summits given it was hosted by the oil-reliant United Arab Emirates with the chief executive officer of the UAE state oil company, Sultan Al Jaber, serving as COP28 president. Laughter may often be better than crying, but laughter just doesn’t seem right for this level of irresponsibility and contempt for humanity and the environment.

Perhaps next year’s COP29 can be scheduled for the offices of ExxonMobil? Or perhaps the world’s oil majors can bid on which will host? I do know that Baku, Azerbaijan, has been designated as the site for COP29 and that Azerbaijan is a significant oil and gas producer, even if not as big as the United Arab Emirates. But we might as well take the final step toward making these annual climate summits a complete farce. It would at least be more honest.

They delivered empty talk

The official COP28 website is quite cheery and is headlined “We United/We Acted/We Delivered.” Beyond continuing oil and gas profits, it is difficult to say what was delivered. The official final statement declares “the Parties agreed a landmark text named The UAE Consensus, that sets out an ambitious climate agenda to keep 1.5°C within reach. The UAE Consensus calls on Parties to transition away from fossil fuels to reach net zero, encourages them to submit economy-wide Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), includes a new specific target to triple renewables and double energy efficiency by 2030, and builds momentum towards a new architecture for climate finance.”

When we look at the details, we find that the “UAE Consensus” is “An unprecedented reference to transitioning away from all fossil fuels to enable the world to reach net zero by 2050” and that “economy-wide emission reduction targets” are “encouraged.” In other words, nothing concrete. What does “transition away” mean? Not much. And that countries are “encouraged” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions means that, as with past climate summits, there are no mechanisms to ensure any promises are kept. And are environmental organizations seen as relevant to any process of reducing emissions? Certainly not! Instead, finance capital will save us: Another point is “Building momentum behind the financial architecture reform agenda, recognizing the role of credit rating agencies for the first time, and calling for a scale up of concessional and grant finance.”

Banks are not going to save us. From 2015, when the Paris Climate Accord was signed, through 2022, 60 of the world’s biggest banks have invested US$4.6 trillion in fossil fuel projects. And the amount of money the controllers of finance capital are investing is growing: $742 billion was invested in the industry in 2021 alone. Four United States-based banks were the worst offenders, according to a report by seven environmental organizations, and three Canadian banks are among the top dozen in the world for financing fossil fuels. Each of these are big contributors to fracking and tar sands production. It’s not only companies like Saudi Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

What was that about crying or laughing? So it’s more idle talk, the same as previous climate summits. Last year’s COP27 in Egypt established a “loss and damage” fund for Global South countries that remains voluntary and features an implementation plan that “requests” countries that have not yet done so “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 climate targets. Note that word: “requests.” Oh please consider stopping your environmental destruction if it’s not too inconvenient. That was preceded by COP26 in Glasgow failing to enact any enforcement mechanisms; COP25 in Madrid concluding with an announcement of two more years of roundtables; COP24 in Katowice, Poland, promoting coal; and COP23 in Bonn ending with a promise that people will get together and talk some more.

A vague declaration that countries will “transition away” in some unspecified and non-enforceable way is consistent with past climate summits. And what might be expected from a conference in which a record number of fossil fuel delegates were in attendance — more than 2,400 and four times more than were in attendance at COP27. For added fun, the COP28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, declared that a phaseout of fossil fuels would “take the world back into caves” and that there is “no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5 [degrees] C.” The OPEC cartel of oil-producing countries declared its members should “proactively reject” any reduction target aimed at fossil fuels and ExxonMobil’s chief executive officer, Darren Woods, complained that climate talks focus too much on renewable energy.

The world was not impressed

Thus it is with less than surprise that independent assessments of COP28 are less than glowing. Here is the assessment of Climate Action Tracker: 

“Few of the sectoral initiatives announced during COP28 will meaningfully contribute to closing the emissions gap. Many of them lack either the ambition, clarity, coverage or accountability needed to really make a difference. We estimate that of the total emissions savings that could be achieved by the pledges, around a quarter is already included in government [nationally determined contributions], around a quarter is additional and achievable, and around half is unlikely to be achieved without further action to improve the initiatives. … The ‘Oil and Gas Decarbonisation Accelerator’ is a prime example of a greenwashing initiative by oil and gas companies. It only focuses on upstream emissions from oil and gas production — but the real change has to come from phasing out fossil fuels, where emissions are at least five times greater.”

The “Oil and Gas Decarbonisation Accelerator” is a promise by oil companies to reduce emissions that occur during the production of oil and gas, including a halt to “routine flaring” by 2030. Climate Action Tracker’s report states that “The initiative risks being a distraction that misses the woods for the trees.” That is because emissions from the combustion of oil and gas are nearly nine times greater than the emissions from oil and gas extraction. In other words, it is fossil fuels themselves that must be phased out because it is their use that is responsible for the lion’s share of greenhouse gas emissions. But the likelihood of meaningful reduction of production emissions is “negligible” because China and Russia have not signed up to this initiative, while Canada, Norway and the United States “are way behind in meeting their 2030 emissions reduction targets,” and would need to fulfill this promise to make progress on overall reduction pledges.

Overall, the world is nowhere near successfully limiting global warming to the Paris Climate Summit goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees C. above the pre-industrial level. Even if all current pledges were to be met, a temperature increase of 2.1 degrees by 2100 can be expected, and if current business as usual continues, the world is looking at an increase of 2.7 degrees by the end of the century. And of course if there is no serious mitigation, temperature rises will not stop in 2100.

None of this has gone unnoticed. More than 300 civil society organizations signed a letter calling for a phaseout of fossil fuels as part of an equitable global energy transition. Declaring that “The only way to achieve the ambition of the Paris Agreement is to substantially reduce the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels, starting now,” the letter states:

“COP28 must adopt a comprehensive energy transformation package with legal force – including a full, fast, fair, and funded fossil fuel phaseout, renewable energy and energy efficiency targets, real protections for people and nature, and massively scaled up public funding on fair terms. … By refusing to commit to address the emissions from oil and gas being burned and to end fossil fuel expansion, the proposed ‘Global Decarbonization Accelerator’ would serve as a smokescreen to hide the reality that we need to phase out oil, gas, and coal.”

Will there be enough to eat?

The world’s food supply is at stake in this environmental crisis as well. Representatives of small farmers, such as La Via Campesina, were drowned out by lobbyists for Big Agriculture. Large U.S.-based meat and dairy companies have “spent millions campaigning against climate action and sowing doubt about the links between animal agriculture and climate change,” according to New York University research. Speaking with Inside Climate News, Oliver Lazarus, one of the study’s three authors, said, “These companies are some of the world’s biggest contributors to climate change.” A report in DeSmog notes, “While big meat and dairy corporations have spent millions lobbying against climate action, smallholder farmers are disproportionately victims of the climate crisis.” The DeSmog report added, “While small farms feed most people in low- and middle-income nations, they are responsible for only a fraction of global farming emissions. Helping smallholders to adapt and respond to climate change is fundamental for climate justice.”

The world’s capitalist food system brings us inflation, hunger and waste — more than one-third of the world’s population did not have access to adequate food in 2020, according to a United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization report.

Is it really necessary to restate the case? Another UN study, Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window, states that climate policies currently in place “point to a 2.8°C temperature rise by the end of the century.” The report adds, “only an urgent system-wide transformation can deliver the enormous cuts needed to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 2030: 45 per cent compared with projections based on policies currently in place to get on track to 1.5°C and 30 per cent for 2°C.”

As a final piling on, there is the Global Tipping Points report issued by a consortium of scientists and issued by Exeter University in Britain. “Harmful tipping points in the natural world pose some of the gravest threats faced by humanity,” the report says. “Their triggering will severely damage our planet’s life-support systems and threaten the stability of our societies.” Five tipping points already at risk of breaching are the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, warm-water coral reefs, North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre circulation and permafrost regions. These would have catastrophic consequences:

“For example, the collapse of the Atlantic Ocean’s great overturning circulation combined with global warming could cause half of the global area for growing wheat and maize to be lost. Five major tipping points are already at risk of being crossed due to warming right now and three more are threatened in the 2030s as the world exceeds 1.5°C global warming. The full damage caused by negative tipping points will be far greater than their initial impact. The effects will cascade through globalised social and economic systems, and could exceed the ability of some countries to adapt. Negative tipping points show that the threat posed by the climate and ecological crisis is far more severe than is commonly understood and is of a magnitude never before faced by humanity.”

Nonetheless, the capitalist system’s industrialists and financiers, and the governments that cater to them and bend to their will, would like nothing more than to continue business as usual. That will soon be impossible. Once again, our descendants — living in a world of flooded cities, food shortages, resource depletion, mass species die-offs, unprecedented human migration and large numbers of people dying should business as usual continue — are not likely to believe that their ruined world would be a fair tradeoff for a handful of industrialists and financiers of the past getting obscenely rich. We live in a global economic system under which it is profitable for a handful of powerful people to profit from the destruction of the environment, and this behavior is richly rewarded. The end of capitalism is precisely what must be envisioned. Organize like your life depends on it, because it does.