They say the purpose of a system is what it does, meaning you should judge it not by its stated goals but by its results. On that basis, the purpose of China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and a handful of other countries in the latest round of international climate talks is to make the planet much hotter.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations’ confab of climate scientists, just concluded a pivotal meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.?High on their agenda was the timing of their seventh exhaustive assessment of the state of the world, known as AR7. The scientists would like to deliver this report in full by late 2028, making it available for that year’s U.N. climate conference, known as COP33. China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other countries want to delay some or all of that report until 2029.
Why does this timing matter? Because COP33 is when the world is scheduled to take a hard look at every country’s progress on meeting the goals of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement, when everybody agreed to try to limit global heating to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial averages at worst, 1.5 degrees at best. This “stocktake” will be more meaningful if those countries have fresh climate science, hot off the presses, from the IPCC, one body every country in the world agrees on as a reliable source.
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