Thread by @tjayaraman

WHAT HAPPENED AT COP26? ASSESSMENTS AND REFLECTIONS -- FULL TALK NOW AVAILABLE ON THE MSSRF YOUTUBE CHANNEL.

Also from the MSSRF website at
mssrf.org/content/what-h…
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Some highlights from the talk:
COP26 was India's COP in 3 important ways. First, PM Modi's announcements at the start that reassured the world. And laid a challenge before the developed world to match the mitigation ambition of developing countries with ambition in finance. 2/n

Second, India was a key player in finalising the Paris Rulebook in a spirit of compromise while providing full support to the fight of colleagues of G77+China on adaptation and loss and damage. 3/n

Third, during the closing hours of COP26, India was a powerful voice for equity and articulated clearly "the right of countries to their fair share of the global carbon budget." 4/n

This argument, powerfully put to practical effect in the discussion on coal, has tapped a powerful vein of understanding and support in sections of global civil society, global media and scientists and experts. 5/n

Developed countries failed on the other hand to deliver anything in finance. 17 years from Rio to Copenhagen to get started and 12 years from Copenhagen to Glasgow -- serious climate finance at the required scale is still awaited. Nothing for loss and damage as well. 6/n

Developed countries i) ignored their historical responsibility for the bulk of historical climate emissions, thus engendering the climate crisis, ii) continue their grab of the carbon budget way beyond their fair share with inadequate NDCs and far-too-late net-zero targets. 7/n

They have stuffed the decision with a series of non-mandatory text on mitigation that seeks the impossible in two ways: i) squeeze more mitigation out of developing countries (bar China) that have already low emissions to start with -- like squeezing water out of stone. 8/n

ii) a speeding up of the mitigation ambition cycle that makes it so rapid as to be infeasible. Pre-2020 performance does not lend any confidence for delivery of such ambition. In any case the weak language of the text is meant for rhetorical victory and not serious action. 9/n

That these steps are the ratcheting mechanism of the Paris Agreement does not stand serious scrutiny. It is a rewriting of the PA, including the temperature target, that is sought to be shifted to 1.5 degrees, and introducing periodic updating of the Long-term Strategy (LTS) 10/n

However, the US + EU, 10 percent of the world, will eat up 30 per cent of the remaining carbon budget for 1.5 degree C warming. "Keeping 1.5 alive" is on life-support, there is no finance on the table, and contentious issues will still dog ETF and Article 6 implementation. 11/n

Real damage outside the COP proper, through denial of basic fossil fuel infrastructure needed to even grow renewables. Utter hypocrisy as the guzzlers of oil and gas join hands to deny even the bare minimum of an industrial future to those who contributed least to warming. 12/n

The troika of a post-Brexit UK, desperate to assert its global reach, the US posturing as a climate leader instead of being a repentant prodigal, and a belligerent EU that regards itself the custodian of global environmental health, have little substantive to show. 13/n

This and more in the talk. @JMauskar @bforboseman @brandoncwu @nit_set @moefcc @3rdworldnetwork @KanitkarT @chilledasad100 @n_thanki 14/n