In the aftermath of a disgraceful, disappointing United Nations climate change conference, the questions I\u2019ve been hearing fall into two categories: What\u2019s next? And if COP 25 was supposed to be our pathway to get ahead of the climate crisis, what\u2019s left of that process?<\/p>\n
Each year since the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) series has produced a similar dynamic. Global leaders like UN Secretary General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres<\/a> stress the urgent need to advance climate action. Science and campaign organizations time their latest reports to make sure the most<\/a> current<\/a>, most dismal<\/a> updates<\/a> are in negotiators\u2019 hands. Small island states<\/a> and other vulnerable nations<\/a> insist they can\u2019t wait any longer for decisive action; their people are devastated by climate disasters while rising seas threaten shorelines or entire countries. Marchers take to the streets, this year in record numbers<\/a> in downtown Madrid, after #FridaysForFuture founder Greta Thunberg dashed<\/a> back to Europe by low-carbon racing catamaran when COP 25 was abruptly relocated<\/a> from Chile.<\/p>\n Anyone tuning in to the process, hearing the urgency, seeing the effects of a global climate emergency accumulating before their very eyes can\u2019t help getting their hopes up. Surely, this year, they\u2019ll get their act together and get this done!<\/p>\n Then negotiations begin, the world\u2019s largest emitters dig in their heels, fossil lobbyists spend two weeks sponsoring panel sessions and cocktail parties to press their case, and the most useful, meaningful commitments are gradually stripped out of the final decision document.<\/p>\n It\u2019s such an old, familiar story that one of the memes circulating on Twitter after this COP went into overtime showed Charlie Brown of the decidedly boomer-era Peanuts <\/em>comic strip, trying to finally kick the football<\/a> before Lucy Van Pelt yanks it away yet again.<\/p>\n Except that this year\u2019s COP negotiations made Lucy look like a paragon of flexibility, civility and cooperation \u2014 or, as we might put it in COP-speak, a source of \u201cconstructive dialogue\u201d pointing to a suitable \u201clanding zone\u201d with only a minimum number of square brackets<\/a> left in the text. (At least Charlie Brown gets a landing zone.)<\/p>\n By the close of the conference, normally circumspect negotiators were pointing fingers, calling out countries like Australia and Brazil for obstructing progress at every turn, while Guinean diplomat Alpha Oumar Kaloga declared<\/a> the US a \u201cclimate criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n A low bar for success<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n It was an ignoble end to a conference where the bar for success had already been set low, compared with the urgency of the climate crisis.<\/p>\n Under the Paris accord, 2020 is the year when countries must set solid (though still voluntary) commitments to speed up their greenhouse gas emissions reductions. It\u2019s also the long-standing deadline for wealthy countries to begin contributing US$100 billion per year to the UN Green Climate Fund, enabling developing countries to mitigate their own emissions and adapt to climate impacts.<\/p>\n With the big deliverables expected next year, the agenda for 2019 came in two layers. There was hope the conference would reach final agreement on Article 6<\/a>, a contested, nine-paragraph text on international carbon trading that remains the last section of the Paris Agreement that hasn\u2019t been operationalized in the \u201crulebook\u201d for climate action. And there was a big, desperate push for international financing to help address loss and damage<\/a>, the massive, unavoidable devastation the climate crisis is already wreaking in countries from Mozambique<\/a> to Fiji<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the level of aspiration, negotiators at the conference and marchers in the streets were looking for a clear statement of intent, urging countries to dig deep and aim high as they update their Paris targets. But none of it happened.<\/p>\n After running 44 hours over time, COP 25 dissolved<\/a> in failure, frustration and anger on the morning of December 15, with a large bloc of countries and an exhausted climate advocacy community blaming the world\u2019s biggest emitters and the fossil fuel interests behind them.<\/p>\n \u201cThe spirit and the objectives of the Paris Agreement are being eroded clause by clause, discussion by discussion,\u201d warned<\/a> Grenada Environment Minister Simon Stiell.<\/p>\n \u201cOur people are already suffering from the impacts of climate change,\u201d said<\/a> Sonam Wangdi, chair of the Least Developed Countries Group. \u201cOur communities across the world are being devastated.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a disastrous, profoundly distressing outcome \u2014 the worst I have ever seen,\u201d said<\/a> Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa. \u201cAt a time when scientists are queuing up to warn about terrifying consequences if emissions keep rising, and schoolchildren taking to the streets in their millions, what we have here in Madrid is a betrayal.\u201d<\/p>\n What can the COP process achieve?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A \u201chigh ambition coalition\u201d of small island states, least-developed countries and the European Union did eke out a partial win, with language calling on countries to \u201ccommunicate or update\u201d new climate plans next year \u201creflecting their highest possible ambition.\u201d The coalition \u201cwill now hope to put political pressure \u2014 from within the talks, in behind-the-scenes meetings in world capitals, and in the outside world from civil society \u2014 on all governments to recommit to the 2015 Paris accord in 2020 through updates to their national climate plans,\u201d the Guardian<\/em> reported<\/a>. \u201cThat will be a difficult task, judging by the scenes at the two-week-long Madrid conference.\u201d<\/p>\n So what\u2019s the point? What, if anything, can the COP achieve to justify the time, dollars, carbon and public hope and confidence it squanders each year?<\/p>\n Before declaring the UN process a failure and, likely as not, giving up in despair, it\u2019s a good idea to think through what the COP is for \u2014 and to plan our next steps accordingly.<\/p>\n One reality hanging over COP 25 was that many countries were hanging on, some of them by their fingernails, for the Donald Trump era of blatant climate delinquency to be winding down by the time COP 26 convenes on November 9, 2020. There were suggestions that bigger emitters won\u2019t adopt new targets until one of the biggest is aligned with the Paris objectives.<\/p>\n The larger issue is that the UN process \u201cis not, and cannot be, some surrogate global legislative assembly,\u201d wrote<\/a> Tom Burke, chair and founder of the UK\u2019s E3G climate consultancy, in early December.<\/p>\n \u201cIts real-world task is to keep enough alignment of the forces within and between countries that want to solve the problem for the real economy to make the transition to net zero. If we expect it to do more than it can, it will fail.\u201d And if that happens, \u201cwe lose that alignment and everyone\u2019s climate efforts go backwards.\u201d<\/p>\n By that measure, two things are true.<\/p>\n Investors, clean-era businesses, cities, provincial and state governments, and the community sector are all more fiercely committed to faster, deeper carbon cuts than ever before.<\/p>\n And if \u201cclimate diplomacy happens in capitals not negotiating rooms,\u201d as Burke writes, the agenda in Ottawa is clear. It includes strengthening Canada\u2019s 2030 emissions reduction target; setting the legally binding, five-year decarbonization milestones in Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson\u2019s mandate letter<\/a> from the Prime Minister; committing the country to its fair share<\/a> of the burden for international climate finance; and rejecting Teck Resources\u2019 proposal<\/a> for a massive new $20.6-billion tar sands\/oil sands mine in Alberta.<\/p>\n The most basic message from COP 25 is that there\u2019s still time to step up and address the climate crisis, but that time is right now. No one else is going to save us. So, it\u2019s time for everyone\u2014federal, provincial and Indigenous governments, cities, businesses, trade unions, investors, cleantech and natural climate solution entrepreneurs, civil society, an ascendant climate youth movement and Canadians of all ages \u2014 to do our part.<\/p>\n Photo:\u00a0Shutterstock\/by Fotografia Stock Ruiz<\/span><\/p>\n Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the\u00a0<\/em>Policy Options\u00a0discussion, and send in your own submission.\u00a0Here is a\u00a0<\/em>link<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on how to do it. <\/em>|\u00a0Souhaitez-vous r\u00e9agir \u00e0 cet article ? <\/em>Joignez-vous aux d\u00e9bats d\u2019<\/em>Options politiques\u00a0et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces\u00a0<\/em>directives<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the aftermath of a disgraceful, disappointing United Nations climate change conference, the questions I\u2019ve been hearing fall into two categories: What\u2019s next? And if COP 25 was supposed to be our pathway to get ahead of the climate crisis, what\u2019s left of that process? Each year since the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":276692,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-10-08T02:46:33Z","apple_news_api_id":"aa46e6b9-ed80-4d4e-aea5-c930c4aedae2","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-08T02:46:33Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Aqkbmue2ATU6upckwxK7a4g","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[9361,9360,9372],"tags":[8638],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[4217,4261],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[],"class_list":["post-267768","issues","type-issues","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environnement","category-international","category-recent-stories-fr","tag-changements-climatiques","irpp-category-affaires-internationales","irpp-category-environnement"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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