Tag: Decarbonization

Climate action or distraction? Sweeping COP pledges won’t touch fossil fuel use

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A torrent of pollution-slashing pledges from governments and major oil companies sparked cries of “greenwashing” on Saturday, even before world leaders had boarded their flights home from this year’s global climate conference.  

After leaders wrapped two days of speeches filled with high-flying rhetoric and impassioned pleas for action, the Emirati presidency of the COP28 climate talks unleashed a series of initiatives aimed at cleaning up the world’s energy sector, the largest source of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. 

The announcement, made at an hours-long event Saturday afternoon featuring U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, contained two main planks — a pledge by oil and gas companies to reduce emissions, and a commitment by 118 countries to triple the world’s renewable energy capacity and double energy savings efforts. 

It was, on its face, an impressive and ambitious reveal. 

COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber, the oil executive helming the talks, crowed that the package “aligns more countries and companies around the North Star of keeping 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach than ever before,” referring to the Paris Agreement target for limiting global warming. 

But many climate-vulnerable countries and non-government groups instantly cast an arched eyebrow toward the whole endeavor.

“The rapid acceleration of clean energy is needed, and we’ve called for the tripling of renewables. But it is only half the solution,” said Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands. “The pledge can’t greenwash countries that are simultaneously expanding fossil fuel production.” 

Carroll Muffett, president of the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law, said: “The only way to ‘decarbonize’ carbon-based oil and gas is to stop producing it. … Anything short of this is just more industry greenwash.”

The divided reaction illustrates the fine line negotiators are trying to walk. The European Union has campaigned for months to win converts to the pledge on renewables and energy efficiency the U.S. and others signed up to on Saturday, even offering €2.3 billion to help. And the COP28 presidency has been on board. 

But Brussels, in theory, also wants these efforts to go hand in hand with a fossil fuel phaseout — a tough proposition for countries pulling in millions from the sector. The EU rhetoric often goes slightly beyond the U.S., even though the two allies officially support the end of “unabated” fossil fuel use, language that leaves the door open for continued oil and gas use as long as the emissions are captured — though such technology remains largely unproven.

Von der Leyen was seen trying to thread that needle on Saturday. She omitted fossil fuels altogether from her speech to leaders before slipping in a mention in a press release published hours later: “We are united by our common belief that to respect the 1.5°C goal … we need to phase out fossil fuels.” 

Harris on Saturday said the world “cannot afford to be incremental. We need transformative change and exponential impact.” 

But she did not mention phasing out fossil fuels in her speech, either. The U.S., the world’s top oil producer, has not made the goal a central pillar of its COP28 strategy. 

Flurry of pledges  

The EU and the UAE said 118 countries had signed up to the global energy goals.

The new fossil fuels agreement has been branded the “Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter” and earned the signatures of 50 companies. The COP28 presidency said it had “launched” the deal with Saudi Arabia — the world’s largest oil exporter and one of the main obstacles to progress on international climate action.

Among the signatories was Saudi state energy company, Aramco, the world’s biggest energy firm — and second-biggest company of any sort, by revenue. Other global giants like ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies also signed.

They have committed to eliminate methane emissions by 2030, to end the routine flaring of gas by the same date, and to achieve net-zero emissions from their production operations by 2050. Adnan Amin, CEO of COP28, singled out the fact that, among the 50 firms, 29 are national oil companies.  

“That in itself is highly significant because you have not seen national oil companies so evident in these discussions before,” he told reporters.

The COP28 presidency could not disguise its glee at the flurry of announcements from the opening weekend of the conference.

“It already feels like an awful lot that we have delivered, but I am proud to say that this is just the beginning,” Majid al-Suwaidi, the COP28 director general, told reporters. 

Fred Krupp, president of the U.S.-based Environmental Defense Fund, predicted: “This will be the single most impactful day I’ve seen at any COP in 30 years in terms of slowing the rate of warming.” 

But other observers said the oil and gas commitments did not go far beyond commitments many companies already make. Research firm Zero Carbon Analytics noted the deal is “voluntary and broadly repeats previous pledges.”

Melanie Robinson, global climate program director at the World Resources Institute, said it was “encouraging that some national oil companies have set methane reduction targets for the first time.” 

But she added: “Most global oil and gas companies already have stringent requirements to cut methane emissions. … This charter is proof that voluntary commitments from the oil and gas industry will never foster the level of ambition necessary to tackle the climate crisis.” 

Some critics theorized that the COP28 presidency had deliberately launched the renewables and energy efficiency targets together with the oil and gas pledge. 

The combination, said David Tong, global industry campaign manager at advocacy group Oil Change International, “appears to be a calculated move to distract from the weakness of this industry pledge.”

The charter, he added, “is a trojan horse for Big Oil and Gas greenwash.” 

Beyond voluntary moves 

A push to speed up the phaseout of coal power garnered less attention — with French President Emmanuel Macron separately unveiling a new initiative and the United States joining a growing alliance of countries pledging to zero out coal emissions.

Macron’s “coal transition accelerator” focuses on ending private financing for coal, helping coal-dependent communities and scaling up clean energy. And Washington’s new commitment confirms its path to end all coal-fired power generation unless the emissions are first captured through technology. U.S. use of coal for power generation has already plummeted in the past decade. 

The U.S. pledge will put pressure on China, the world’s largest consumer and producer of coal, as well as countries like Japan, Turkey and Australia to give up on the high-polluting fuel, said Leo Roberts, program lead on fossil fuel transitions at think tank E3G. 

“It’s symbolic, the world’s biggest economy getting behind the shift away from the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal. And it’s sending a signal to … others who haven’t made the same commitment,” he said. 

The U.S. also unveiled new restrictions on methane emissions for its oil and gas sector on Saturday — a central plank of the Biden administration’s climate plans — and several leaders called for greater efforts to curb the potent greenhouse gas in their speeches. 

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley called for a “global methane agreement” at COP28, warning that voluntary efforts hadn’t worked out. Von der Leyen, meanwhile, urged negotiators to enshrine the renewables and energy efficiency targets in the final summit text. 

Mohamed Adow, director of the think tank Power Shift Africa, warned delegates not to get distracted by nonbinding pledges. 

“We need to remember COP28 is not a trade show and a press conference,” he cautioned. “The talks are why we are here and getting an agreed fossil fuel phaseout date remains the biggest step countries need to take here in Dubai over the remaining days of the summit.”

Sara Schonhardt contributed reporting.



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Decline, fear and the AfD in Germany

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Mathias Döpfner is chairman and CEO of Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company.

In Germany today, the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) is maintaining a stable 20 percent in opinion polls — coming in two to four points ahead of the ruling center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and running hard on the heels of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

In some federal states, the AfD is already the strongest party. In Thuringia, for example, it has reached 34 percent, meaning the party has three times as many supporters there as the SPD. And in some administrative districts, around half of those eligible to vote are leaning toward the AfD. According to one Forsa survey in June, the AfD is currently the strongest party in the east of Germany — a worrying trend with elections due this year in Bavaria and Hesse, and next year in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg. And, of course, there are also the European Union elections in 2024.

However, this rapid rise should come as no surprise. The writing has been on the wall for a long time. And more than anything else, the party’s recent advances are a result of an increasing sense among broad swathes of the population that they aren’t being represented by traditional political and media elites.

This disconnect was first accelerated by the refugee crisis of 2015, then increased during the pandemic, and has since escalated in response to the increasing high-handedness of the “woke movement” and climate politics. Just a few weeks ago, a survey by the German Civil Service Association revealed trust in the government’s ability to do its job is at an all-time low, with 69 percent saying it is deeply out of its depth.

Meanwhile, opinion polls show the government fares particularly badly in Germany’s east. A rising number of people — including the otherwise stable but also staid middle classes — now feel enough is enough, and no other party is as good at exploiting this feeling as the AfD.

The problem, however, is the AfD isn’t a normal democratic party.

The regional offices of Germany’s domestic intelligence services in the federal states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Lower Saxony and Baden-Württemberg have all classified their local AfD associations as “organizations of interest.”

And the same applies at the federal level. The national office of the domestic intelligence service, the remit of which includes protecting the German constitution, has also classified the national party of the AfD as “of interest.”

These concerns about the party’s commitment to the constitution aren’t unjustified. In a 2018 speech at the national conference of the party’s youth section, Junge Alternative, former AfD chairman Alexander Gauland said that “Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in a thousand years of successful German history.”

When speaking about the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Björn Höcke, group chairman of the AfD in Thuringia, said on 2017 that “We Germans — and I’m not talking about you patriots who have gathered here today. We Germans, our people, are the only people in the world to place a monument of shame in the heart of our capital city.”

And in a speech in the Bundestag in 2018, party boss Alice Weidel bandied about terms like “headscarf girls” and “knife-wielding men,” while her co-chairman Tino Chrupalla speaks of an “Umvolkung” — that is, an “ethnicity inversion” — which comes straight out of Nazi ideology.

This small sample of public statements leaves no doubt that such utterings aren’t slips of the tongue — they reflect these leaders’ core beliefs.

And while many vote for the AfD out of protest, more than anything else, the party feeds off resentment and fear, exploiting and fueling anger, hate and envy, pushing conspiracy theories to hit out at “those at the top,” as well as foreigners, Jews, the LGTBQ+ community or just about anyone who might be deemed different. And the party leaders’ blatant admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin exposes their reverence for autocracy.

Failure to prevent the AfD’s rise could potentially first corrode, then shatter democracy and rule of law in Germany.

But how can a party like this, which is getting stronger in the polls, be dealt with? Is a ban the right way to go? They are always difficult to deal with, and it isn’t even an option at this stage. What about joining the AfD to form a coalition and temper the party? That is even more difficult, as it is unreasonable to argue that the AfD should be treated like other parties. The Nazis and Adolf Hitler had also been democratically elected when they seized power in 1933.

So, what options remain? Many politicians and journalists say we need to confront the AfD with critical arguments. Sounds good on the face of it. But people have already been doing that for a decade — with scant success.

This is why the only remaining option is to attempt what neither the AfD nor many politicians from established parties have been able to do: Start taking voters’ most important concerns and issues seriously, and seek to find solutions.

The fears that have allowed the AfD to become as big as it is today are clearly identifiable. When a recent survey by Infratest Dimap asked “What topics most influence your decision to vote for the AfD at the moment?” 65 percent said immigration, 47 percent said energy policies and 43 percent named the economy.

And in their handling of all three of these key issues, the older parties have demonstrated moral cowardice and a lack of honesty.

This is especially apparent when it comes to immigration.

Why is it so hard for centrist politicians to just come out and say a few simple truths? Germany is a land of immigration, and it must remain so if it wants to be economically successful. And modern migration policy needs a healthy balance between altruism and self-interest.

According to economists’ most recent estimations, Germany needs to bring in 1 to 1.5 million skilled individuals per year from abroad. What we need is an immigration of excellence and qualified workers. People from war zones and crisis regions should obviously be taken in. But beyond that, we can only take the migrants we need, the ones who will benefit us.

This means the social welfare benefits for immigrants require critical rethinking, with the goal of creating a situation where every immigrant would be able to and would have to actually start working immediately. Then add to this factors that are a matter of course in countries with a successful history of integration: learning the local language and respecting the constitution and the laws. And anyone who doesn’t must leave — and fast.

Germany’s current immigration policy is dysfunctional. Most politicians and journalists are fully aware of this, but they just won’t say it out loud. And all this does is strengthen the AfD, as well as other groups on the left and right that have no true respect for democracy.

Not speaking out about the problem is the biggest problem. Indeed, when issues are taboo, it doesn’t make the issues any smaller, just the demagogues stronger.

We’re seeing the same with energy policy. Everyone knows that in the short term, our energy needs can’t be met by wind and solar power alone. Anyone interested in reality knows decarbonization without nuclear power isn’t going to be feasible any time soon. And they know heat pumps and cutting vacation flights won’t solve the global carbon challenge — it will, however, weaken the German economy.

We need only look at one example: While just over 2 percent of global carbon emissions come from aviation, almost a third are caused by China — an increasing amount of which comes from coal-fired power stations. Ordinary Germans are very much aware the sacrifices they’re being asked to make, and the costs being piled on them, make no sense in the broader scheme of things, and they’re understandably upset.

In some cases, this makes them more likely to vote for the AfD.

This brings us to the third and final reason why people are so agitated. The EU, and above all Germany, has broken its promise about advancing prosperity and growth. Fewer young people now see a future for themselves in Germany; more and more service providers and companies are leaving; and the increasing number of immigrants without means is reducing the average GNP per capita. Germans aren’t becoming more prosperous — they’re becoming poorer.

Traditional politicians and political parties unable to offer change are thus on very shaky ground. They have disconnected themselves from their voters, and they are paving the way for populists who use bogeyman tactics and offer simplistic solutions that solve nothing.



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Joe Biden’s 2024 Menu: The Rich.

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President Joe Biden on Thursday rolled out his proposed budget for fiscal 2024, an ambitious plan that would raise taxes on the rich and on corporations while expanding the social safety net. It would cut nearly $3 trillion from the federal deficit over the next decade by imposing a 25 percent minimum tax on the richest Americans. If you want to read the entire 185-page document, have at it!

Of course, it also won’t do a single bit of that, because Republicans won’t pass any of the major parts of the plan, particularly not the tax increases, but also not the social safety net parts like paid family leave, childcare, or Biden’s plan to rescue the Medicare trust fund for at least 25 years.

Not a bit of it will become law except the most routine keep-things-as-they-are parts, which will no doubt end up in yet another omnibus spending bill passed barely in time to avoid a government shutdown. If then. Oh, also, the part that increases defense spending by about 3.2 percent, to over $835 billion, will probably do just fine. But whatever defense budget eventually passes in the fall won’t be accompanied by the tax increases that would make the expenditures slightly less odious.

So why even offer a budget that’s not going to get passed by Congress? For starters, presidents have to submit a budget request in early February (traditionally by the first Monday, but everything moves slow these days) to get the process rolling, and the budget reflects the administration’s priorities, even if the opposition is able to block them. Also, let’s remember that Donald Trump’s budgets, which zeroed out entire federal agencies, were entirely exercises in rightwing fantasy. And yet somehow we still have the National Endowment for the Arts.

So sure, a federal budget is mostly aspirational, and this year, Biden’s budget serves two practical purposes: It sets out markers for where he wants his government to go in a second term (you know, if he runs), and it’s also an opening bid in the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling. Republicans say they want to cut federal spending because the deficits are too high, and Biden’s budget is over here saying “Yeah? You show me how you’d reduce the deficit by $3 trillion in 10 years, ya mooks.”

Former Obama administration official Kenneth Baer, who served in the Office of Management and Budget, explained to the Washington Post,

“As one of the people who has spent many a long night writing and editing a budget, I take umbrage at the people who say it’s a meaningless document. It’s not a meaningless document. […] It sets the terms of the debate. It shows what’s important to you, your commitments and what you really want.”

So let’s take a look at what’s in this thing and what that says about what Joe Biden wants.

The Rich Still Need To Be Eaten

Speaking at a union hall in Philadelphia yesterday, Biden emphasized that his third budget proposal is aimed at “investing in America and all of America,” because “Too many people have been left behind and treated like they’re invisible. Not anymore. I promise I see you.”

To that end, the $6.8 trillion budget plan (over 10 years) includes about $5 trillion in tax increases on the wealthiest individuals and corporations, most of which will go to cover new programs that Biden has previously put forward but that haven’t yet been enacted.

Some specific tax increase proposals may sound familiar because some of them were in the original version of Build Back Better, but were removed after Sen. Kyrsten Sinema said Donald Trump’s 2017 Big Fat Tax Cuts for Rich Fuckwads couldn’t be reversed, not even a little.

  • Raise the corporate income tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent, which would still be lower than the 35 percent rate prior to Trump’s 2017 cuts. It would also raise the tax rate on foreign earnings from 10.5 percent to 21 percent, to reduce the incentive for companies to move operations out of the USA.
  • Repeal Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans by returning the top marginal tax rate to 39.7 percent from the current 37 percent. This would affect taxpayers making $400,000 a year for individuals, or $450,000 married filing jointly.
  • Tax capital gains the same as income for people making over $1 million, and close the carried interest loopholefor chrissakes finally.
  • Increase the surtax on corporate stock buybacks from one percent to four percent
  • A new minimum tax on billionaires, assessing a 25 percent minimum tax on all income of the wealthiest tenth of one percent of Americans. That’s a follow-up to the minimum corporate tax that was included in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.
  • Raise Medicare taxes on those making more than $400,000 a year, and make more types of income eligible for Medicare taxation. We detailed that plan right here. Medicare would also be able to negotiate prices on more prescription drugs sooner, creating additional savings that would go to the Medicare trust fund.

Nice Things We Need

The budget also includes some domestic programs that were good ideas when they were proposed in Build Back Better, and were still good ideas when Joe Manchin demanded they be removed from Build Back Better. A few have been downsized for the budget plan, which also adds some items that weren’t in BBB.

  • Restore the enhanced child tax credit and make it permanent. Hell yes. It markedly reduced child poverty in the US, and it’s damn near criminal that it was allowed to lapse. Also way better for America’s children than allowing them to work in meatpacking plants.
  • College affordability. The budget calls for higher maximum awards for Pell grants and for a $500 million grant program to make two years of community college free — not quite the full free community college program Biden originally ran on.
  • Universal Pre-K and affordable child care. Not quite the full programs proposed in Build Back Better, but as CNN summarizes, this would fund “a new federal-state partnership program that would provide universal, free preschool. The spending plan would also increase funding for existing federal early care and education programs.”
  • Paid family and medical leave — another big priority that still needs doing. 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave; for fuckssake let’s get this done. Yeah, in 2025 after we retake the House and expand the Senate majority.
  • More free school meals. During the pandemic, we gave every kid eat. The Biden budget would provide $15 billion to enable wider free lunches, though hey, since it’s a wish list, why not just say we want universal free school lunch? Kids learn better if they’re not hungry.
  • Make the IRA’s Obamacare subsidies permanent. The enhanced premium subsidies, which started out as part of the American Rescue Plan, have helped reduce the percentage of Americans without healthcare coverage to record lows. But they’re set to expire in 2025.
  • Reduce maternal mortality. It’s still a crisis, with far greater rates of maternal mortality for Black women than for white women. The budget calls for $471 million in funding to expand maternal health care, particularly in rural areas. It would also require all states to provide Medicaid postpartum care for 12 months instead of the current 60 days.
  • $35 per month insulin for all Americans. It was included in the IRA for folks on Social Security, so let’s make that the standard for those on private insurance or who have no insurance at all. It’s literally a matter of life or death.
  • Lower prescription drug prices for seniors. The IRA put a $2000 cap annual on out-of-pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries (going into effect in 2025). Biden wants to further limit copays for generic prescription drugs for chronic conditions to $2.

Yes, We Still Need Climate Spending

While the Inflation Reduction Act was the biggest American investment ever in fighting the climate emergency, Biden’s budget proposal also recognizes that there’s a lot more that needs doing, so it calls for still more funding to move America closer to reaching our Paris climate agreement goals. We want to wrap this sucker up, but take a look at this CNBC piece for more details on how the budget would expand our transition to clean power and cutting carbon emissions. Among the basics:

• $24 billion for climate resilience and conservation

• $16.5 billion for climate science and clean energy innovation

• $6.5 billion for energy storage and transmission projects

• $4.5 billion for jobs building clean energy infrastructure

• $3 billion for advancing adaptation finance

• $1.8 billion for environmental justice initiatives

• $1.2 billion for the Energy Department’s industrial decarbonization activities

Want even more info? I’m leaving a tab open with the White House fact sheet on the budget’s climate priorities, because this is what the agenda for keeping the planet habitable should look like.

So those are some darn good priorities — and a blueprint for the 2024 campaign, too.

And now, back to two years of hearings on Twitter and Hunter’s laptop. Total waste of time, but they may help make a very strong case for not letting Republicans anywhere near power again.

[2024 Budget of the US Government / WaPo / CNBC / NYT / CNBC]

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