We can still avoid irreversible climate catastrophe, but we must act now 

Problems securing affordable accommodations in the remote host town of Belem, on the Amazon River in Brazil, have threatened vital COP 30 climate negotiations before they even begin. But lessons from previous negotiations suggest that such snags, although frustrating, can be overcome.

More importantly, new appreciation of limiting near-term temperatures to prevent climate tipping points suggests that COP 30 can still achieve the historic outcomes needed to protect the world from widespread devastation.

Reports indicate some nations have yet to make COP 30 arrangements due to high prices, despite negotiations beginning Nov. 10. Several major countries have threatened to skip the negotiations altogether because of costs.

This would be a huge mistake. Leadership by key countries is more crucial than ever, because the climate crisis has never been more perilous. Global average temperatures are now 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, pushing up against the Paris Agreement limit; they are already resulting in crippling climate impacts that are killing tens of thousands of people each year and causing hundreds of billions of dollars in annual damages.

Startlingly, far more destructive impacts are on the horizon and will wreak unimaginable devastation unless fast-rising near-term temperatures are more effectively limited. Runaway warming from tipping points and self-amplifying feedback loops in natural systems around the world have become an increasingly pressing and dire prospect, with scientists now adamant these will yield a degraded, hot house planet unless temperatures are quickly abated.   

In this context, a new essay by Bill Gates questioning the potential for catastrophic climate impacts is uniquely ill-timed, given the Trump administration’s politically motivated climate rollbacks, and strangely misinformed, as many others have noted. Gates, who has been a tremendous leader on clean-energy technologies, would do well to review the latest science.    

But there are several key actions, especially the mitigation of super pollutants like methane, that can be taken immediately to limit temperatures and avoid the worst climate calamities.  

Fortunately, over the last few years, there has been growing recognition among climate policymakers that near-term temperatures must be limited to prevent disaster. Specifically, reducing methane and other super climate pollutants can avoid nearly half a degree Celsius of warming by 2050 — four times more than from reducing carbon dioxide alone. In contrast, reducing carbon dioxide would only limit temperatures by one-tenth of a degree over the next 25 years, although it is still necessary to limit long-term temperatures.

These issues are now finally being acknowledged and have begun to shape overall negotiations and national actions.

The United Nations Climate and Clean Air Coalition, a group of nearly 100 nations and 150 private-sector representatives and non-governmental organizations, is focused on cutting super pollutants rapidly, holding ministerial-level meetings immediately before the formal negotiations, which will also be attended by key heads of state. And, critically, 90 percent of nations are now including methane as part of their emissions limit commitments (although much deeper and more immediate cuts are needed, especially by major nations like China). 

Existing actions to cut methane show that reductions can be made quickly and cheaply. The Global Methane Pledge begun at COP 26 now includes 159 nations who have committed to reducing methane from all sources by 30 percent by 2030.  

And industry has begun to act. At COP 28, dozens of companies in the oil and gas industry promised to reduce reductions in methane emissions, as the sector accounts for more than a quarter of all global methane emissions. These commitments, which must now be verified, match plans by many U.S. companies to inexpensively mitigate methane and end wasteful venting and flaring of natural gas, as well as to upgrade equipment to prevent methane leaks from gas production and transport.  

Previous climate negotiations suggest that initial negative media reporting can present reputational challenges for climate negotiations and obscure historic outcomes. In 2009 at the COP 15 meetings in Copenhagen, delegates and news media had to wait 10 hours or more to enter the negotiating venue in freezing cold temperatures, resulting in brutally negative coverage, before substantive outcomes were known. 

Yet COP 15 turned out to be a significant turning point in climate negotiations. President Obama gained commitments from China, which led both nations to jointly announced climate change goals in 2014. This in turn directly paved the way for the 2015 Paris climate agreement involving commitments by all major nations, developing and developed alike. 

Similar historic opportunities are evident in Brazil, especially in the abatement of super pollutants. But unless we take control, tipping points in natural systems like the Amazon rainforest will cause it to move from a net carbon reducer, as it is today, to net contributor in a matter of years. More than a dozen other natural systems are also at risk of tipping points, which would set off self-amplifying super-heating feedbacks.

Global leaders, industry and populations around the world are finally understanding the stakes. If we act quickly on methane and other super pollutants, and decarbonize in the long run, we can still prevent climate catastrophe. But time is short. 

Paul Bledsoe is a professorial lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy. He served on the White House Climate Change Task Force under President Clinton.