If countries extend their reliance on coal in response to the Ukraine war, then “we are cooked,” US climate envoy John Kerry has warned in advance of global talks in Bonn this week.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Kerry criticised a number of large countries for not living up to promises they made at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow last year.
Climate diplomats meet in Bonn amid new energy security worries in an attempt to agree an agenda for Cop27, which is due to take place in Egypt next November.
Mr Kerry said using coal would lead to carbon emissions rises that would undermine efforts to contain global temperature rise to within 1.5 degrees and even 2 degrees.
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To keep this key goal of the Paris climate agreement alive, carbon emissions need to be halved by 2030. But recent evidence from the UK Met Office indicates there is a 50-50 chance of temporarily going past the 1.5-degree temperature threshold in the next five years.
In a Guardian interview last May, Mr Kerry expressed concern that a long Ukraine war would threaten climate efforts, as conflict could make limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees harder to achieve.
The fragile unity shown in Glasgow last November is likely to be tested in Bonn as countries deal with the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis, most notably high energy prices.
Mr Kerry told the BBC despite these drawbacks “as a world we are still not moving fast enough” to rein in the emissions of warming gases that are driving up temperatures.
“We can still win this battle,” he underlined, but it will require a “wholesale elevation of effort by countries all around the world”.
Mr Kerry’s call was echoed by a leading Ukrainian scientist who urged delegates to speed up their transition away from fossil fuels. Dr Svitana Krakovska said oil and gas were the “enablers of war”.
The talks will be carried out by civil servants with limited political input and will review progress on a host of issues agreed in the Glasgow Climate Pact in November – BBC analysis indicates that across a range of issues, very little has been achieved.
The world emerged from Glasgow into an energy crisis sparked by a rapid rise in the price of gas. This has been compounded by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and ongoing problems in global supply lines.
Cop26 president Alok Sharma recently told British MPs political leaders were distracted from climate issues by war and cost of living crises
Governments have also been slow in submitting new carbon-cutting plans as they have promised to do. This includes some large G20 countries such as India, and Cop27 hosts Egypt.
India has scaled up use of coal-fired power generation, while China, the world’s biggest emitter, is building new coal plants.
China, however, has ambitious plans for wind- and solar-power installations. If fully realised, the planned clean energy expansion could cover all additional energy demand growth over coming years, enabling coal consumption and emissions to peak before 2025.
“I think we’ll see the Bonn talks as a real test for whether political will is just words,” said Alex Scott from environmental think tank E3G.
“Or whether there are real genuine commitments to make the changes in policy and in spending plans that are needed to address these issues.”
Ukraine and Russia normally send delegates to this event, but it remains to be seen if both countries will participate.
Dr Krakovska, who led the Ukrainian delegation at the approval sessions of the recent IPCC reports, noted climate was not a critical issue right now. But she hoped negotiators would recognise the role fossil fuels are playing in the war, and act with greater haste to transition away from them.
“The cause of this war, the enabler of this war is from oil and gas,” she told BBC News. “So this is the point for everybody to just think about this and use this opportunity to stop using so much energy and think about our way of life.”
