Petrostates are trying to hijack the planet's future

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 (IPCC), the United Nations’ confab of climate scientists, is meeting this week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. High on their agenda is 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 UN 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 (3.6 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial averages at worst, 1.5C (2.7F) 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.

Without a fresh IPCC report, which will almost certainly show in great detail that countries are failing to meet their Paris promises, there will be less pressure on those countries to step up their efforts. There will be lots of other science available in 2028, of course, but none of it with the IPCC pedigree. 

And there’s a very real risk that, after pushing to delay the science, many of these countries will cite that very delay as an excuse to keep dragging their feet on climate action. After all, the latest IPCC assessment will be a musty five years old in 2028. Thwarting the IPCC’s timeline would be a “major historical break and one which would be used to weaken the international climate process and Paris agreement,” Bill Hare, the chief executive officer and senior scientist of Climate Analytics, a nonprofit research group, told Carbon Brief.

It might soon be too late anyway. The fight over this timeline has already dragged on for more than three years, by far the longest delay between the start of a new assessment cycle and an agreement on report timing, according to Carbon Brief. Scientists need this settled by the end of the year so they can start planning and budgeting for the years to come. But talks in Addis Ababa have gone nowhere so far.

India and other developing countries argue they need a delay so they’ll have more time to do their own analysis. Climate science has been dominated by developed countries so far, raising the risk of bias. These may be legitimate arguments. But that legitimacy is weakened by the enthusiastic agreement of Russia and Saudi Arabia, petrostates known for throwing sand in the gears of climate action. 

The UN’s approach to dealing with climate is byzantine and frustrating. It can also be effective: Political pressure for a transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels picked up after the Paris climate accord. That pressure motivated polluting countries and businesses to take real steps to curb emissions, which prevented some of the most apocalyptic possible heating scenarios.

That pressure has abated lately, with politicians worldwide backtracking on climate, either in the name of addressing runaway energy prices or because of pure ideology. The US, long a UN climate leader, is no longer involved in the IPCC at all, thanks to its climate-change-denying president. Delaying the UN’s premier science report would just be another grim step in this trend.

The Paris stretch goal of 1.5C is long gone, which will likely be painfully apparent by 2028. At that point, much of the world will rue the delays that caused such failure. But there’s still a chance to avoid even more disappointment. 

This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and The Wall Street Journal.