Any assessment of the three decades since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio-92, or Eco-92) that does not include the word “failure” will be closer to good or malicious propaganda than to a cold assessment of facts. and data. Earth’s pollution only increased after it.
Leaving aside other forms of environmental degradation, the climate emergency should be privileged as a representative indicator of the lack of progress. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), after all, was the main treaty resulting from the summit held in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro.
From President George Bush (father) to the Dalai Lama, there was no lack of global celebrities circulating around Riocentro. The geopolitical villain of the day was the US, then the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, followed by the European Union, which was already at the forefront in favor of ambitious decarbonization goals.
The Brazil of Fernando Collor de Mello, in the role of host, began to move from the defensive position of the José Sarney government to an attitude more consistent with the condition of forest power. Deforestation rates would remain a sore point for more than a decade, but the country established itself as an important player in the international scenario of climate negotiation.
The leadership of the Third World, as was said at the time, belonged to China, alongside India and Pakistan at the head of the Group of 77 (G77). The growth of the Chinese economy and the rescue of hundreds of millions from misery have catapulted the Asian nation, since then, to the position of champion of climate pollution, with twice the US emissions and four times that of India.
For the health of the planet, it doesn’t matter which country emits more carbon. Counts the amount of gases such as carbon dioxide (COtwo) and methane (CH4) that reaches the atmosphere, and from this angle the evolution after Rio-92 shows discouraging figures.
To simplify the data, emissions of these pollutants are usually converted to the general measure of CO2-equivalent (COtwoe) and expressed in billions of tons (GtCOtwoand). Adding everything from burning fossil fuels to deforestation, agriculture and livestock, since 1990 climate pollution has advanced by at least 55%, from 38 GtCOtwoand for 59 GtCOtwoand.
In other words: in the period in which 26 conferences of the parties (COPs) were held, annual meetings of the countries that ratified the UNFCCC, the trend of global emissions has never been downward. Not even slowing down, really.
In the first decade after 1990, world emissions grew at the rate of 0.7% per year. At the turn of the century, cadence tripled to 2.1% pa; only after 2010 did the pace decline to 1.3% pa, even though growth was faster than two decades earlier, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) accounting.
In this vein, the curve indicates that it is unlikely to reach the goal in the Paris Agreement (2015) of limiting global warming to 2ºC above pre-industrial levels and, preferably, to 1.5ºC. This would be the safe threshold to ward off the worst risks of deadly extreme events (droughts, cyclones, floods, crop failures and heat waves) and the disappearance of island countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu.
To reach these goals, it would be imperative to stop global emissions from rising before 2030, that is, within the next eight years. And, in the next 20 years, the global economy would have to stop the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for good, or neutralize the unavoidable emissions by capturing the emitted carbon.
Just look at the graph to realize how difficult, if not impossible, it will be to accomplish such a feat. It took a global pandemic leaving 6.3 million dead for emissions to fall from one year to the next (2020). And the rebound came the following year, of 2 GtCOtwoand (+6%), considering only the energy sector — the highest annual growth in absolute terms, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Brazil is under pressure for being a major destroyer of forests and a producer of agricultural commodities. In fact, land use change accounts for 11% of the world’s greenhouse gases, with another 18% for methane, in whose emissions the national livestock sector has a weight.
It is easier and cheaper to reduce carbon by decreasing deforestation and improving the low productivity of beef cattle. But it is no less true that we will never get to Paris without decarbonizing electricity generation and transportation (ships and planes included), which emit almost two-thirds (64%) of all climate pollution.
The fact that the Brazilian electricity matrix is ​​one of the cleanest on the planet, with a predominance of hydro, wind and photovoltaic generation, does not justify continuing to deforest to enrich land grabbers and expand pastures to feed less productive herds than they could be. If there is something to be gained at both ends, why relegate one of them to what is most backward in the rural sector?
Those who travel through the Northeast get copious visual confirmation of the advance of wind energy. The production of electricity with the power of the wind comprises 12% of the installed generation capacity, with 21.5 gigawatts (GW), behind hydroelectric plants (56%), according to the sector association (ABEEólica).
The solar, or photovoltaic, electricity park also grows very fast. Installed capacity reached 15.3 GW, of which 5.7 GW was implemented last year alone. As part of the incentives for this alternative source will be eliminated at the end of this and in the coming years, the momentum is to be expected to continue.
In the world, solar panels are already runners-up in generating capacity among renewable sources, after hydroelectric plants. The historic 1 trillion watt (1 TW) mark was passed in April.
This is the good news about how to cool climate change: there is technology, demand and investment, albeit not in the intensity and speed needed to get out of Parisian purgatory. But new bad news can also come, of course, and from more than one front.
The carte blanche for land grabbers, prospectors, loggers and other gangsters in the Brazilian Amazon, under Jair Bolsonaro, filled the edges of the most threatened forest carbon stock with armed radicals. Even if there is no conflagration, deforestation will take time to retreat, even without reelection.
The war in Ukraine has produced energy insecurity and rising fossil fuel prices, an incentive to produce more, not less, and to invest in expansion in search of self-sufficiency. The likely victory of the GOP in this year’s US congressional election could pave the way for climate denialism’s triumphant return to Congress and Donald Trump to the White House.
Pointing out the failures since 1992, as well as taking care of the possibility that they will deepen, does not serve as a justification for prostrating oneself in impotence and inaction. Rather, it should give a sense of urgency to the mitigation of global warming and the adaptation to climate change, already contracted by the lack of initiative and international consensus.
We have to learn from the history of these three decades. And prepare for the worst.
