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Am I allowed to ask “how were things four years ago,” or is that reserved for presidential candidates in election years?
I had recently graduated college and moved to California, I didn’t realize yet that $4.50 gas was anything abnormal, and I very naively believed that one Sweaty Penguin podcast per week just wasn’t enough stress. No, we needed a second episode, called “Tip of the Iceberg,” where I’d comment on that week’s biggest environmental news and answer audience questions.
The two episodes per week part was short-lived. But writing “Tip of the Iceberg” became my favorite part of the podcast, and now the inspiration for these newsletters. And it started with episode one, four years ago, when Greta Thunberg announced at a rally that COP26 — the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland — was a “failure.” As activists echoed her doom-and-gloom sentiment, I found myself doubting her for one major reason: the conference wasn’t even halfway done. That first episode was my plea to trust the process, and I prayed that opinion would age well.
A week later, I sat in my office glued to the COP26 live newsfeed as the world’s top diplomats negotiated late into the night, sleeping on chairs and benches, seeking the right phrasing to get all 197 countries to sign a new climate agreement. Fortunately Scotland is a few hours ahead of California, so I only had to stay up until like 8pm to hear the eventual news. The Glasgow Climate Pact saw every country commit to a “phase-down of coal power,” making history as the first climate agreement that explicitly named coal as a global warming driver.
Yet, coal was not the word that received attention. Rather, climate advocates were outraged that negotiators landed on the word phase-down instead of phase-out, given reluctance from China and India to adopt the latter. My Tip of the Iceberg episode 2 argued that down and out was a meaningless distinction at the time, China and India had valid reasons to insist on the switch, and the new pact was the opposite of a failure. I felt validated when, a year later, India took the exact action I predicted and showed up at COP27 demanding a phase-down of all fossil fuels.
Today, my trust in the UN rests at an all-time low. What I then saw as an institution founded to keep peace and protect human rights, I now see as increasingly interested in becoming the world’s government — steered by a bloated team of scandal-ridden bureaucrats from whichever countries sit at the “popular table,” and goaded by activists wishing for their least favorite countries to face some [drumroll] consequences! The United States, an enthusiastic global leader four years ago, is now charting its own horrifying extreme in the other direction: not only withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, but threatening trade sanctions on countries that take climate action.
Yet COP30 begins on Monday in Belém, Brazil, promising new advances in forest and nature conservation, climate adaptation and renewable energy financing for developing nations, and more thorough national emission reduction plans. The U.S. will probably be a no-show. And even with my faith in the overall UN plummeting, I find myself feeling the exact same thing about the UN Climate Change Conference specifically as I did four years ago — weird, unapologetic hope.