COP26-Deaf to the cry of Africa

COP26 - The blind spots of the 25,000 participants

Nothing really new has come out of that blinded COP26 meeting from November 1 to 12, 2021 in Glasgow, neither scientifically nor economically, and even less politically. And Africa is once again the victim of many of their resolutions.

Scientifically, first, the participants behaved like "geo-centrists", in conflict with Galileo, still seemingly believing that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Today, the "carbo-centrists" believe that the human cause of global warming is a proven fact!

How could 196 countries come to sign this "Glasgow Pact" which expresses objectives for action in degrees?

Neither the COP 26 nor the last report of the IPCC AR6, answered essential questions:

Like, why does the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only rely on 150 years of observations? Only 1000 years of observations, reconstructed by paleo-climatology, can really explain the causes of the medieval hot period and the Little Ice Age.

It is confusing when the IPCC itself recognizes that "in climate research and modeling, ... we are dealing with a chaotic system, and long-term forecasting of future climate states is not possible" and claims that their mockups "Do not require that every aspect of the response to the causal factors in question be properly simulated" and "do not explicitly distinguish between ‘Objective’ and ‘Subjective’ probabilities"!

Thousands of publications attribute the contemporary warming period to variations in solar activity. But no matter, the Glasgow congressmen no longer have any doubts – only human activity is to blame for climate change. Galileo must be turning in his grave at the idea that science is substituted with a mere presupposition!

Economically and politically, India and China have managed to replace the term "gradual elimination" with "gradual diminution" in coal-fired power. What an understatement!

However, thirty-nine developed countries have signed an agreement ending, by the end of 2022, foreign financing of any projects that would exploit fossil fuels without carbon capture techniques.

Carbon capture has a minimal effect despite its abysmal cost. For projects abroad, this inefficient and expensive technique would therefore be reserved for countries that import power plants, which are generally not very industrialized! In addition, industrial countries would continue to finance these plants on their market without a capture system. The rich will thus reserve an electricity produced with abundant and cheap energy while depriving the poorest countries of it.

Hand on their heart, they pledged to "launch a dialogue" to compensate the South for a carbon-free economy but which in reality is non-viable.

No one listened to the cry of the Zambian, Dambisa Moyo, who denounced this "lethal aid" which mainly serves to promote an endless cycle of corruption across Africa?

This objective to de-carbon economies will make poor countries even poorer!

Today, the European Union (EU) is still 80% dependent on fossil fuels!

After spending €1 trillion over the past 20 years on wind and solar, the EU is at only 2.5% powered by ‘renewable energies’!

Samuele Furfari, an EU civil servant for the past 36 years with the European Commission for Energy Resources, knows the facts and figures:

In Africa, consumption is 700 kg of oil equivalent of energy per person per year

compared to 3,300 kg in Europe!

900 million Africans cook with wood or dried animal dung, or with charcoal for those who have the means. This represents 60% of African energy consumption just for cooking, and up to 99% in Uganda, and Madagascar.

In Europe, electricity consumption is 6,100 kwh per inhabitant against 530 kwh in Africa.

570 million Africans do not even have access to electricity.

In Kenya, 65% of businesses experience two-hour outages between 4 and 14 times a week.

Can those COP26 participants, who consistently pretended that they were especially concerned for the poor who would suffer the consequences of climate change the most, believe for a moment that Africa will be able to develop with the restrictions and conditions they established?

Neither wind nor solar will make up for the need to catch up with Global development.

And when African countries consider investing in hydroelectric dams, or coal plants, the North refuses to finance them on the grounds that it would not be "sustainable development"!

What a paradox, to see our rulers repent for past colonialism, and then indulge in economically iniquitous neo-colonialism and ecologically moralizing paternalism!

Paradox of our NGOs which lock Africa in a sustainable under-development while China is presented as a model even though it is currently building more than 368 coal-fired power stations to modernize its power grid to which 100% of Chinese are connected.

In any case the CO2 emissions from such power stations are safe enough for the planet, since climatic variations are to a much larger extent the result of variations in cosmic radiation correlated with solar cycles.

In Africa, the emergency is not climate but energy with abundant and cheap coal.

There is a major risk that by confusing the cry of NGOs with an alleged clamour of the Earth, we no longer hear the cry of the poor!

• Stanislas de Larminat sur LSDJ – 15/11/2021

(Translated and slightly edited from the original French)