The international climate change negotiations run this year from November 11-22 in Baku, Azerbaijan. It is understandable how eco-anxiety and climate grief can result from following the news of this meeting. After all, it is the 29th negotiation since the first set in 1995, it is being held in a country rich in fossil fuels, and few substantive results have so far emerged from all these discussions.
Often extensive environmental protests can dominate the reporting. The media are awash with dramatic headlines. Almost every such meeting is termed the “last chance” to save the planet or the “make-or-break” talks to resolve climate change.
Unsurprisingly, this rhetoric and hyperbole can adversely impact our mental health. In contrast, injecting realism could help stop feelings of doom, despite the slow pace and frequent lack of results from these climate change meetings.
Background to the Negotiations
The baseline for preventing despondency is realizing what these meetings do and do not offer. They are run by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) based in Bonn, Germany, and created in 1992. Their preferred outcome is international, legally binding agreements through a process termed the Conference of the Parties (COP), with the Baku talks being the UNFCCC COP 29.
COP agreements result from consensus among the 198 UNFCCC country members, although there are procedural ways to pretend that unanimity was achieved when it was not. For any agreement to enter into force, a certain number of national parliaments must ratify it.
UNFCCC was founded mainly to focus on stopping human-caused climate change, actions referred to as climate change mitigation. Numerous aspects of the UNFCCC COP process now address responses to the impacts of human-caused climate change, actions for which are called climate change adaptation.
Aside from the limitations of a UN-organized process requiring backing from governments, three other major constraints are evident. First, the apparent separation of mitigation and adaptation is misleading, because the two overlap and should complement each other. Second, scoping to only human-caused climate change means not considering how to deal with natural climate change. Examples of the latter are continental drift and the Earth’s orbit shifting.
Finally, the UNFCCC process views human-caused climate change as an isolated topic to be addressed on its own. Instead, we could tackle the baseline reasons for human-caused climate change—that dominant human values accept the overexploitation of resources as fast as possible. Human-caused climate change is one symptom, rather than a fundamental cause, of problems our species produces.
COP agreements display all these constraints. Two prominent ones have been the Kyoto Protocol from 1997 and the Paris Agreement from 2015. After signing the Kyoto Protocol, many governments delayed ratification, so it was not until 2005 that it entered into force. Then, in 2011, Canada withdrew.
The Paris Agreement, too, has major drawbacks. It lists voluntary rather than mandatory greenhouse gas emission reduction and absorption. If all countries met their commitments, then the Paris Agreement’s own global temperature target would still not be met!
Knowing these limitations can make the process seem heartbreaking. It also indicates the importance of not emphasizing the UNFCCC COP for substantive, effective, positive action.
Positive Action Despite the COP
The first step to avoid becoming disheartened is not succumbing to the notion that the COP should be our all-encompassing saviour yet fails catastrophically. Multilateral agreements and their processes are one step among many toward addressing climate change.
Simultaneously, human-caused climate change is one major concern among many, but is not the only one. Besides, required actions are not exclusive to climate change; rather, they are needed for a wide variety of gains.
Local support for safe walking, cycling, and wheelchair use.
Source: Ilan Kelman
Support for walking, cycling, and public transportation encourages less reliance on private motor vehicles, reduces air pollution, and promotes our physical and mental health. Part of air pollution reduction is less greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet climate change does not need to be mentioned in order to convince one’s local or state/province/territory government to invest in paths (including winter maintenance) for walking, cycling, and wheelchairs, alongside safe, affordable, frequent, and efficient public transportation. No matter what a national government’s stance at a UNFCCC COP, climate change mitigation can be enacted locally based on all the other advantages.
Environment Essential Reads
Meanwhile, human-caused climate change affects the weather. If society is not ready to deal with weather, then disasters can result, with consequent physical and mental health impacts. Investment in reducing disaster risks may show, as I have argued elsewhere, how infrequently climate change causes disasters, inspiring us to do better to avoid disasters, irrespective of the weather.
Warning systems are especially useful. When integrated into people’s daily lives and livelihoods, particularly through local initiatives and operations, they support day-to-day living while preventing disasters.
Even more inspirational is that no new money is required. Annual subsidies from governments to fossil fuel companies exceed $400 billion directly and perhaps ten times that amount indirectly. Reducing those subsidies frees up money for actions to support our physical and mental health—which are also actions for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Remaining Hopeful
This realism proffers hope. We remain a long way from final celebrations.
We have major difficulties to overcome with plenty of barriers in place—such as convincing our governments to reduce fossil fuel subsidies. Often, recycling continues to dominate rather than promoting less consumption through rethinking, reducing, reusing, and repurposing.
Conversely, opportunities expand to design and operate cities, dwellings, and workplaces reducing our consumption and increasing our safety, leading to eco-inspiration. Locations with long-term visions have redressed some risks from floods and storms, while wildfires under climate change do not need to lead to wildfire disasters.
The UNFCCC climate change negotiations in Baku and beyond might or might not yield adequate action. Regardless, many reasons exist to shift from climate grief to climate hope, not only supporting our mental health, but also tackling human-caused climate change and its adverse impacts.
