COP25

Cop25 has started. Nice speeches, big words, promises, and calls for urgency by almost everyone.

Staff levels are highly committed and in a sense of urgency. Unfortunately, they have to implement unclear strategies of politicians who for some strange reason seem to be unable to commemorate and agree on common sense and/or the common good.

Of course, there is progress. Several countries have announced to plan to reduce their emissions to net-zero by 2050. Technology keeps leapfrogging political developments. Vague road-maps are being drawn up. However, in general, the song remains the same.

• The science is crystal clear – even if all countries manage to go net-zero by 2050, the warming already could have consequences – not only on the environment, but also on our societies – that we avoid to think of. 2050 is insufficient
• Declared long-term targets are not backed up by immediate actions – i.e. pushing the responsibility for action to the next generation of politicians.
• There is no common strategy to actually reduce emissions
• Tools proposed to induce and initiate emissions reductions are not the most efficient tools available.

We will hear form the EU on their “European Green Deal” shortly. The work on such a plan is laudable and welcome. However, & realistically speaking, everything better than the above would be a rather surprising development. Which of course, would be very welcome, nevertheless.

And still nobody talks of the most obvious market-based tool – taxing.