And boy was it big. The news in question is that a new United Nations report, this one from UNEP rather than the UNCCCP or some such entity (actually UNFCCC) says all that sound, fury and money signified nothing. Scientific Alarmism howled “The world is well on track to blow past a goal many countries have enshrined as the beating heart of global climate efforts: 1.5 degrees Celsius” beneath a graphic of a burning thermometer/Earth-on-a-stick thing of some sort. And the New York Times groaned, “One year after world leaders made a landmark promise to move away from fossil fuels, countries have essentially made no progress in cutting emissions and tackling global warming, according to a United Nations report issued on Thursday.” Landmark? The actual name of the UNEP report is “No more hot air… please!” which might prompt groans of “Not that pun again… please!” But it does offer the sober reality that thus far what we’ve had is not landmarks but ephemeral gusts of rhetoric. And just possibly there’s a reason.

The situation is bleak for anyone who thought climate policy was working or might be about to. As the Times story said:

“Global greenhouse gas emissions soared to a record 57 gigatons last year and are not on track to decline much, if at all, this decade, the report found. Collectively, nations have been so slow to curtail their use of oil, gas and coal that it now looks unlikely that countries will be able to limit global warming to the levels they agreed to under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.”

Now looks unlikely? When did it look likely? As we’ve said before, audiences are not well-served by this kind of journalism even when, as here, it is rather more blunt about the situation than it often is.

And what can anyone make of Scientific American, or the alarmist source from which it reprinted this muddle, maintaining with respect to 1.5C that:

“That temperature target has become the guidepost that countries use to craft their national climate plans. Efforts to cut climate pollution and build resilience are measured against it. Keeping it alive has become a rallying cry at consecutive global climate conferences among activists and officials.”

If it were the guidepost that countries use to craft their national climate plans, at least among those who use guideposts to craft things not measure them and think guideposts are living things (“Block that metaphor!” we cry as the New Yorker once did), then surely those plans would have been, how to put it, crafted to reach this guidepost not to “blow past” it. The whole point is that the plans had nothing to do with the promises, due to hypocrisy, ineptitude or an ugly mix of the two.

The piece thrashes on that:

“there’s been increasing pushback among some in the scientific community about the feasibility of that target since it would require immediate action in all countries and sectors and a massive scaling up of technology without delays or exorbitant costs.”

Oh. So it was never feasible and you only just told us now? Is that what you’re saying? Well, no, because it goes on to claim that:

“Early next year, countries are expected to submit stronger plans to the U.N. for how they plan to meet their obligations to the Paris Agreement, a deal aimed at holding warming ‘well below’ 2 degrees while ‘pursuing efforts’ to limit it to 1.5 degrees. Thursday’s report outlines what’s needed [to] keep warming as close to 1.5 degrees as possible.”

So the same countries doing nothing this year are expected to submit stronger plans next year. Expected by whom? If “some in the scientific community” say the current target is impossible, then what naif expects them all suddenly to reach it? And if it’s expected by these chumps “early next year”, then what’s all the fuss about COP29 late this year?

Mind you, the general response reads somewhat like a concerted lobbying effort regarding COP29. Thus Climate Home News hyperventilated that:

“The title of the 2024 UN Emissions Gap Report – ‘No more hot air … please!’ – seems overly polite given the gravity of the situation the world faces on climate change. It warns that current policies add up to global warming of 3.1 degrees Celsius - and even if national climate action plans for this decade are fully implemented, temperatures will still rise by 2.6C. Given the horrific impacts we’re experiencing now with warming of around 1.3C, the fact – as emphasised by the report’s chief scientist – that nothing has really changed since last year, with planet-heating emissions hitting a new record – should surely ring loud alarm bells.”

Horrific impacts from 1.3C? Why weren’t we told? Wasn’t 1.5C meant to be the threshold tipping point? Whatever.

The subtitle of the UNEP report is “With a massive gap between rhetoric and reality, countries draft new climate commitments” which to our jaded eye seems likely to increase the gap by piling a rhetorical Pelion on a rhetorical Ossa beside a bleak empty flat stretch of reality. And off we go again.

Beneath an icon of a melted snowman on an ice flow clutching a multicoloured flag, the report disgorges 100 pages of trite prose and gloomy numbers plus a glowing red penguin (whereupon the snowman revives). For instance “Crunch time is here” (what, again?) from “Inger Andersen, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme” (whose salary is hard to determine and their financial management seems a bit shaky but UNEP’s 37 “Key management personnel” earn an average of US$210,810 plus benefits so it’s nice work if you can get it) because:

“As wildfires, heatwaves, storms and droughts intensify globally, nations are preparing new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) for submission early next year ahead of COP 30 in Brazil.”

Hey wait a minute. What happened to COP29? Isn’t it the big show, the place to walk the walk, stop bloviating and save Earth, penguins, snowpersons and all? Mind you, while COP28 attracted a widely-ridiculed 85,000 participants (some 97,000 people registered so evidently there were a few thousand no-shows), with barely two weeks to go COP29 had only 32,000 registrants (including us). If “only” is the right word. But if that many people isn’t enough to historically landmark a major commitment to meet again next year, it’s hard to believe another 32k would add anything except more carbon emissions to the travel footprint.

Might as well, arguably, since the UNEP report concedes that:

“the increase in total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 1.3 per cent from 2022 levels is above the average rate in the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic (2010–2019), when GHG emissions growth averaged 0.8 per cent per year. “

With achievements like that, who needs failures? And their table of per capita and (who cares?) historical emissions reveal the awkward reality that China is not just in first place, but emits more than the US, India and the entire EU combined. And while US emissions went down slightly (1.4%) from 2022 to 2023, and Europe’s fell 7.5%, China’s rose 5.2 and India’s 6.1.

You really wonder how these people can be quite so clueless. Following that revelation, the report says:

“Of the parties to the Paris Agreement, 90 per cent have updated or replaced their initial NDC from the time of adoption of the Paris Agreement. However, most of this improvement came in the lead-up to the twenty-sixth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 26) in 2021. Despite requests from the last three COPs to further strengthen 2030 targets, only one country has strengthened its target since COP 28.”

Improvements? How is making a promise, breaking it, then making a bigger one “progress”? Oh, and since “Nationally Determined Contribution” means each government gets to pretend for itself what it might try to do it’s not exactly an “agreement” in the normal sense.

By the way, we weren’t initially sure whether that Times piece was news or opinion, a distinction that doesn’t hold as it once did anyway. So we checked and the author is a self-described “New York Times reporter based in Washington, covering technology and policy efforts to address global warming.” Moreover “I write about the policies and innovations that governments, companies and people are pursuing to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Which means, rather plainly, that he has a vested interest in the whole enterprise rather than a detached gimlet eye. Which might explain why COP conferences are dependably described as “historic” or in this case “landmark” when they don’t achieve anything. So stand by for the historic landmark agreement from Baku.