- As the world grappled with extreme weather events related to climate change, policy responses were mixed.
- Coal consumption rebounded in 2022, but the US passed “aggressive” climate legislation.
- Historic decisions were made at UN climate and biodiversity conferences.
- For news and analysis on climate change, go to News24 Climate Future.
The damage caused by climate change over the past year was sometimes so immense that it was hard to comprehend. In Pakistan alone, extreme summer floods killed thousands, displaced millions and caused more than $40 billion in losses.
Autumn floods in Nigeria killed hundreds and displaced more than a million people. Droughts in Europe, China and the US dried up once unstoppable rivers and slowed trade flows on major arteries like the Mississippi and Rhine.
Faced with these extremes, the human response was uneven at best.
Consumption of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, has rebounded in 2022. Countries like the UK and China appeared to back away from major climate pledges. But all this pessimism came with more than a silver lining.
Indeed, it is all too easy to overlook the steps towards a lower carbon world that came between more high-profile catastrophes.
READ | 7 events in 2022 that highlighted climate change in SA
As 2022 unfolded, a clear path of climate hope emerged. New political breakthroughs have the potential to unlock enormous progress in the effort to slow and reverse warming temperatures.
Below is a list of six encouraging developments from a very momentous year, as nation after nation elected more climate-minded governments and enacted new efforts to curb greenhouse gases.
1. President Biden’s big win changes everything
Just when it seemed that Washington was hopelessly paralyzed, in August the Biden administration and a narrow Democratic majority in Congress managed to pass the Reduced Inflation Act. This new US law, backed by some $374 billion in climate spending, is the most aggressive climate legislation in the country.
READ | Biden signs important bill on climate change and health care
Its provisions ensure that billions of dollars will be poured into the energy transition over the coming decades, facilitating the deployment of renewable energy, building green technologies, and subsidizing consumer adoption of everything, from electric cars to heat pumps. Experts in energy models predict that the law will eliminate four billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
2. The EU taxes carbon dioxide at its border
The European Union began to meet its commitment to reduce emissions by 55% by 2030 (from 1990 levels). The bloc’s 27 members reached a landmark agreement to establish the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, an emissions tax on some imports that aims to protect carbon-intensive European industries that are forced to comply with the rules every year. stricter in the region.
Once it comes into force, additional costs will be imposed on goods imported from countries without EU restrictions on planet-warming pollution.
READ | Nick Hedley | What the new EU carbon border tax means for SA
A separate 2022 milestone saw the biggest overhaul of the EU carbon market that will extend it to road transport, shipping and heating. This policy expansion will also accelerate the pace at which companies, from power producers to steel manufacturers, must reduce pollution.
The agreement provided certainty to companies and investors, raising European carbon prices to a record level for the year.
3. Birds, bees and biodiversity have a great rest
Just two weeks before 2022 ended, negotiators at the COP15 United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal scored a surprise victory in the form of a 195-nation commitment to protect and restore at least 30% of the land and Earth’s water by 2030.
Rich nations have also pledged to pay an estimated $30 billion a year by 2030 to poorer nations, partly through a new biodiversity fund.
4. Rich nations agree to finance loss and damage, energy transition
The biodiversity breakthrough came a month after another historic moment at a UN-backed conference. Delegates to COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, reached a last-minute deal to create a loss and damage fund to help developing countries affected by climate change, a decades-old demand from nations least have contributed to global warming. .
Another form of climate finance, Just Energy Transition Partnerships, has also become more widely used in 2022. The mechanism is intended to help emerging economies that are heavily dependent on coal move away from the more polluting fossil fuel in a way that don’t leave workers and communities behind. behind.
South Africa’s $8.5 billion JETP, announced in 2021, became a model for these deals. Additional deals made in 2022 are expected to mobilize $20 billion for Indonesia and $15.5 billion for Vietnam.
5. Changes in leadership, change in attitudes
Voters achieved big changes in leadership in several key countries. In Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won the presidency in part by promising to eliminate deforestation in the Amazon to zero. Climate parties also won big in the Australian elections.
READ | EXPLAINER | Five Ways Brazil’s Lula Can Restore Green Politics As President
Meanwhile, in November, President Joe Biden met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and restored relations that had been cut short by a diplomatic standoff over Taiwan. Cooperation between the two main economies (and emitters of greenhouse gases) has been essential to consolidate previous climate advances such as the Paris Agreement of 2015.
China’s Foreign Ministry said both nations are interested in tackling climate change cooperatively.
6. Take methane more seriously
The world has been slow to understand the dangers of methane, a particularly powerful heat-trapping gas. But since last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, nations have signed a global commitment to reduce those emissions, which can come from oil and gas wells, coal seams, landfills and livestock.
In the run-up to COP27 in Egypt, for example, new nations like Australia joined the pledge, bringing the total number of registered countries to more than 150. Meanwhile, in the US, the Biden administration pushed through more rules. stringent regulations that would require power companies to do more to quell methane leaks.
