At the End of the COP27, a Truth Appears in Broad Daylight: The Climate Is the Poor Relation of Geopolitics.
Until the war in Ukraine is over and America and China find a modus vivendi, the climate will not return to the forefront of geopolitical concerns.
Finished with great delay on Sunday, November 20, 2022, the annual UN climate conference did not produce significant results. In Sharm el-Sheikh, the States could only agree on the creation of a fund to compensate “losses and damages” caused by global warming in the poorest countries - without going as far as organizing the concrete financing of this fund.
Wishing to be positive, the President of the French Republic wrote on Sunday evening, November 20, 2022, in a tweet: “At COP27, France and Europe reaffirmed their commitment to the climate.”
In rhetoric, we would say that there is a form of pretense there. The main actors of global warming, namely China and the United States, are not named by Emmanuel Macron. He continues his tweet thus: “We need a new financial pact with the most vulnerable countries. I’ll work on this with our partners with a view to a summit in Paris before the next COP.”
Which partners does the French president mean? The virtuous Europeans only, or the Chinese and Americans as well? It is not clear.
The French initiative is commendable. Let's hope it succeeds. But the climate has become a poor relation of geopolitics. It was not the case at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, which adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The COP (Conference of the Parties) is the supreme body of the Rio convention; it has met annually since 1995.
At the time of the Rio Summit, we were in the midst of the “new world order” that Bush Sr. The cold war seemed to be over forever; America, leading a very large coalition, had just liberated Kuwait from its Iraqi invader, with the approval of the UN; Russia was learning about capitalism from Harvard professors; China was developing rapidly thanks to Western technology and investments; Europeans were creating a monetary union presented as a political and social paradise; world peace seemed assured, thanks to an "international community" strong and united enough to bring to resignation any possible troublemakers, whether they were Iraqis or Serbs.
Gathered in Rio, the world leaders sincerely believed that the fight against global warming had become their number one priority.
But today, for the majority of the world's political leaders, the climate issue is now behind the war in Ukraine and behind the Sino-American competition for the position of a world leader.
Will Russia be invited to the conference that France wants to organize in Paris before the COP28 in November 2023 in Dubai? Probably not. Because of Ukraine. Yet Russia is essential to any environmental policy relating to the immense Arctic continent.
The Chinese president did not travel to Egypt for the COP27, while he made the trip to Samarkand for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, the trip to Bali for the G20 summit, and the trip to Bangkok for the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit.
Global warming is not an emergency for Xi Jinping. Economically, the program that matters most to him is the success of the “New Silk Roads,” designed to conquer Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe commercially. Politically, his ambition is to survive America's new technological embargo, before being able to definitively chase it away from the Asian continent (starting with the island of Taiwan).
As far as the environment is concerned, President Xi Jinping is certainly sincere in his project to depollute the air in Chinese cities. China is ahead of all other countries in the world in terms of electric vehicles. A city like Shenzhen, north of Hong Kong, is almost silent because combustion engines are prohibited.
But global warming isn't keeping the Chinese president up at night.
Like Donald Trump, he gives little credence to the catastrophic predictions of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). If one day the Maldives needs to be helped because of rising sea levels, China will always prefer to do so bilaterally rather than through an international fund, even one led by France.
Let's not be naive. As long as the war in Ukraine lasts, as long as America and China have not found a modus vivendi to get out of their Thucydides Trap, the fight against global warming will not regain the forefront of world geopolitics.
Some reading
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