COP 29 opened Monday, November 11 in Baku, Azerbaijan, with a list of absentees as long as an arm, starting with the French and American presidents, the German chancellor and the Canadian Prime Minister. In the background of this COP 29, climate skeptic Donald Trump was re-elected, even though during his first term he had led the United States out of the Paris agreements.
Christian Gollier is a climate economist, co-author of the IPCC reports in 2007 and 2013 and is also head of the Toulouse School of Economics. He calls on citizens to understand that caring about the climate involves real sacrifices.
franceinfo: Should we fear that global climate ambitions will be reduced to nothing by Donald Trump's victory? ?
Christian Gollier : The arrival of Trump will make American ambition much smaller than it was under the previous administration. But in addition, it will initiate a process which can be very destructive, because if the Americans do not decarbonize, the others will say to themselves: 'but why am I going to make efforts for the benefit of people who, themselves, refuse to contribute to the collective effort?'
“We must understand that the global war against climate change requires a general mobilization of all countries, of all citizens of this planet.”
Christian Gollier, climate economistat franceinfo
And indeed, the defection of the United States can be the start of a new failure, as we experienced with the Kyoto agreements, when the Americans do not ratify the project, and then the Europeans and the Japanese decide , they too, to give up because the Americans give up.
So if Trump carries out his threat by leaving the Paris agreements, what will happen?
But I fear that if we do not create a coalition of countries that remain ambitious on the climate, there will be a disintegration as we experienced with the Kyoto protocol.
Does this mean that there will no longer be a global ambition to reduce the temperature by 1.5 degrees?
For four long years, we are going to have to suffer from a world leader country, which has built a global system organized around cooperation, and we are going to transform this world order into another chaotic order, in which we are going to be in the everyone for self and all against all.
Trump's energy ambitions also raise a question. He wants to resume hydraulic fracturing. What consequences could this have?
By resuming drilling, the Americans will extract even more oil and shale gas, they will further reduce the price of gasoline and natural gas in the United States, they will be even more competitive with the Europe. And therefore, if Europe persists in its ambition to penalize the most carbon-intensive industries, we risk having a situation where we will simply move the most carbon-intensive production towards the United States and China.
“A deindustrialization of Europe will have zero ecological benefit if we simply move production to countries that are less vocal about climate change.”
Christian Gollier, climate economistat franceinfo
With consequences on global warming.
Exactly. So here, we are no longer in a 1.5 degree diagram, nor 2, nor even 3 degrees. We could be at 4 or 5 degrees, if we really cannot maintain cohesion among countries that are ambitious on the climate.
Lowering energy prices would be good news for energy prices and bad news for the climate.
We would like the price of carbon-free energy to fall! There, the price of gasoline at the pump is 0.89 euros in the United States, so we are already very low. And the drop in energy prices that results from more production in the United States is very bad news.
But nothing says that we will not produce more carbon-free energy, particularly solar energy, at the same time. Nobody is saying that the policies pursued by Joe Biden, with the IRA and his ambition around clean energy, will end with Trump. It’s a policy that works particularly in Republican states like Texas.
But if the price of fossil fuels falls, the profitability of renewable energies is more problematic. We have seen this for several years.
“The fall in the prices of natural gas, oil and coal means that manufacturers who focus on green will be in difficulty.”
Christian Gollierat franceinfo
At COP 29, one of the challenges is financing developing countries so that they can develop without oil and coal. Can you talk about why it's important to reach an agreement?
Because developing countries represent a very large part of the world's population. And if this world population achieves the same standard of living as Western countries, with the same methods of energy production, particularly fossil fuels, we will again be at more than 4 degrees. So it is absolutely necessary that the development of these countries takes place in the least carbon-intensive way possible.
So this is not giving charity to developing countries.
First, it is Western countries that are responsible for climate change for a century and a half, we have put an incredible quantity of CO2 into the atmosphere. This accident was imposed on victims: the countries of the South. Now, they are calling us to account and we do not want to compensate the victim of this accident, for which we are responsible.
The initial ambition was to reach 100 billion in aid per year. Is this enough?
So, the countries of the South, today, are putting a proposal on the table in Baku where they are asking for more than 1,000 billion dollars per year. In 2009, we put 100 billion per year on the table, it was the Copenhagen agreement during COP15. And today, indeed, it is very insufficient.
In France alone, 60 billion euros per year should be devoted to climate change, according to the latest Mahfouz-Pisani-Ferry report, half of which is public money. Do you agree with this amount?
Yes, we are in the order of magnitude of 2 to 4% of French GDP. This is not negligible. In the end, it is still the people who will pay, either through higher taxes if they are public subsidies, or through carbon goods which will be more expensive, because producers will be penalized for continuing to use these products.
But we are far from it. The fact of halving the envelope dedicated to the purchase of an electric vehicle in the next budget, between the ecological bonus, leasing and the conversion bonus, we can clearly see that we are far from these 60 billion per year dedicated to change.
There is no more money in the coffers and there are major priorities in education and health. The government is in great difficulty regarding this. But regardless of government, the equation is extremely complex and people don't want to pay. People, they first want the end of the month before the end of the world. This has been true for a number of years and it is even more true today with the election of Donald Trump, with real questions about what politicians will be able to succeed in imposing as sacrifices on the population, on the citizens, to voters, to achieve objectives that we would all like to achieve. But the importance of the costs has not yet been fully realized. And you have just reminded us that 60 billion euros per year in France is important.
So, we are not at all up to these ambitions.
Citizens must understand that each time they emit a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere, they are responsible for several thousand euros in damage that will be borne by future generations. As long as citizens do not understand this, they will not vote for politicians who will implement strategies to reduce CO2 emissions, that is to say sacrifices made by citizens.
Related News :