“Because these national plans are among the most important policy documents governments will produce this century, their quality should be the paramount consideration,” said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, in a speech in Brazil on February 6. “The vast majority of countries have indicated they will submit new plans this year.”
Cool. He went on to say that they would need to get these in by September in order to be included in a synthesis report to be released at COP30 in Belém in November. So, not by February 10, then. For the record, one more NDC came in, from Canada, two days late; maybe more will trickle in this month, or maybe they’ll wait until that September deadline. Or maybe they’ll skip it entirely.
“From the conversations I’ve been having, countries are taking this extremely seriously,” Stiell said, in a speech that emphasized the multi-trillion-dollar opportunity inherent to a clean energy transition. “Taking a bit more time to ensure these plans are first-rate makes sense, properly outlining how they will contribute to this effort and therefore what rewards they will reap.” What were they doing the last few years, out of curiosity?
NDCs, of course, are not necessarily a direct indicator of climate change progress (and one of the 13 submitted was the US, in December, which is now somewhat meaningless). The Paris Agreement is largely without teeth, an unenforceable treaty that sets multilateral targets and then works by, more or less, shame and monetary motivation. But it is all we have, from an international collaboration standpoint; and if its deadlines don’t mean anything, what are we doing here?
With the caveat that NDCs don’t run in a straight line to emissions reductions, timing really does matter here. Every ton of CO2 sent skyward stays up there for centuries, happily warming everything below it. As one expert told me last year, “It’s cumulative emissions, not the emissions in 2050, that matter.” The best time to stop burning fossil fuels was, let’s say, 1965. The second best time was 1983. The third best time was every day since then, including February 10, when the NDCs were due. The world is still far off track, policy-wise, from what it needs; letting countries casually skip deadlines, however arbitrary, that might theoretically improve our extremely warm trajectory sure isn’t going to help.
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