As expected. What we need now is for those researchers who published estimations showing that “it only get as bad as +2.7 ℃” to retract those papers or to write corrections, as they are based on hopeful promises. It’s a very bad idea to make promises without the plans for deep change required to fulfill those promises.

would be the “COP of truth,” he said.

…

In the end, it may well have been a more honest COP than those that preceded it — just not in the way President Lula intended.

Precisely. The mask is slowly falling off. We’re on the BAU scenario, RCP8.5.

“It would have been crazy,” said Felix Finkbeiner, founder of a conservation organization called Plant for the Planet who has been attending COPs since 2010. “Transitioning away from fossil fuels was set as a vague goal at COP28, but this would have been an actual process that initiated a massive step forward.”

Yeah, escalating like that would help reveal the bullshitters:

As the conference stretched past its official ending time, the parties negotiating behind closed doors became increasingly frustrated with the lack of movement on the fossil fuel road map. The obstacles to success, said Peter Wittoeck, one of the negotiators for Belgium, were the same oil-rich countries that had been blocking more ambitious action on climate change at COPs for decades.

“The major pushback is coming from the Like-Minded Developing Countries and the Arab Group,” Wittoeck said, referring, in the former case, to a coalition of large emerging economies that includes China, India, and South Africa, as well as a group of 20 Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Those nations, he said, “represent fossil fuel interests, obviously, and the fear of being limited in their economic development.”

Of course. Petrostates.

But how much money, how quickly it’s delivered, and what kinds of projects it should fund has always been a matter of debate. This year, it stormed into the spotlight, and it’s not hard to see why. The consequences of climate change have begun to spill into plain view, and countries are starting to feel serious economic pressure as a result. Gallagher Re, a global reinsurance broker, estimates that the direct cost of natural perils around the world in 2024 totaled a staggering $417 billion. Public and private insurance companies covered more than $150 billion of that, meaning the rest of the balance was covered by governments, policyholders, taxpayers, and everyday people.

It will cost everything.

European negotiators told Grist that the focus on adaptation put them in a tough spot. In the absence of a U.S. presence at COP, Europe has sought to position itself as the de facto global leader on climate action by trying to force the fossil fuel road map language into the final text. But its negotiators quickly found that the developing countries they were trying to align themselves with were laser-focused on adaptation financing.

Adaptation is seen as a compromise because it’s not mitigation, so it allows more GHGs from burning fossil fuels and turning forests into pastures and feed. The problems is that adaptation works relative to stable goal. If you invest lots of money into a sea wall for +3℃ and the temperature goes to +3.5℃, your sea wall is useless. The same applies for all infrastructure and big projects for adaptation. And it only gets more useless as the temperature goes and the chaos increases (not linear).

“The world has changed,” said Joe Thwaites, a senior advocate for international climate finance at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “They are feeling the political strain back home and are very sensitive to headlines about how much money is being spent internationally.”

Because they allowed right-wing populists to spread their disinformation. And with that, it means that fossil fuels will be phased out when they run out of the cheap stuff. That should get interesting in the next decade.

Do Lago had to pause the plenary to confer with Colombia and other nations. After 30 minutes of haggling, the parties came back to the table to finish the conference with an agreement to continue conversations in the future. Do Lago also promised to launch two road maps of his own, one aimed at phasing out fossil fuels and the other in service of ending deforestation. Those efforts will take place outside the binding authority of the Paris Agreement, however, and are essentially opt-in endeavors.

mhm.

I hope that the children and the next generations never forgive the adults. Every day, every adult on this planet is working towards achieving the status of being irredeemable.