Extract from ABC News
It says a lot about a topic when it has its own shorthand, an abbreviation that's widely recognised even if its genesis or meaning isn't.
Such is the case with what's widely known as COP.
In total, there have been 27 COP meetings since the first was held in Munich, Germany, in 1995.
From Thursday, November 30 the latest COP gathering has been underway in Dubai, a gleaming metropolis of steel and glass that sits in the United Arab Emirates on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula.
Each year, the meetings seem to get bigger, often with headlines to match.
But what is COP, why is its 28th congregation being held, and why should ordinary punters on the other side of the world in Australia care?
The acronym stands for the conference of the parties, and it's essentially an annual meeting where the member states of the United Nations get together to talk about the progress in dealing with global warming.
Perhaps more importantly, it's also where those member states try to thrash out what's not happening, and what more needs to be done.
This year will be no different.
Here are five quick things to watch out for as events unfold in the UAE.
A tripling of renewable energy
While the opportunities for disagreement between states at COP28 are practically boundless, there are a few areas of common ground.
Chief among these is the call for a 200 per cent increase in the world's renewable energy capacity by the end of the decade.
There's currently about 3,400 gigawatts of green energy capacity across the globe – about 50 times greater than the size of Australia's biggest electricity system.
From a relatively slow start, the amount of renewable energy capacity being added every year has been gaining pace and is on track to be about 500 gigawatts a year, according to the UN.
But the same organisation is pushing for a much more accelerated rate of 1,500 gigawatts a year to ensure overall capacity hits 11,000 gigawatts of green power by 2030.
For context, the total generation capacity of America's electricity system is currently 1,300 gigawatts.
While this additional capacity will come from a variety of sources including wind and hydropower, undoubtedly the lion's share will be provided by solar.
Solar is fast emerging as the dominant form of renewable energy, with generation costs that have been described as the lowest in history.
What's more, the world's ability to pump out new solar panels is huge.
Global energy forecaster Rystad recently noted that an extraordinary 1,200 gigawatts of solar manufacturing capacity was currently under construction.
Doubling energy efficiency
Building new stuff is often easier to comprehend and sell if you're a politician or a businessman than using less energy or using it more efficiently.
But, as with other precious commodities such as water, the truth is that the cheapest electron for a power system is one that doesn't have to be supplied in the first place.
The most obvious illustration of this is a household electrical appliance.
These days, typical whitegoods such as a fridge, a dishwasher or clothes dryer use much less energy than the same appliance might have 20 years ago.
Research showed the world would have used 13 per cent more energy in 2020 compared with two decades earlier without efficiency improvements.
Carbon emissions related to that energy use would have been 14 per cent higher, researchers found.
And so another of the key shared goals at COP28 will be a doubling of energy efficiency across the world within the next seven years.
Changes to the way we get around and the shift to electric vehicles are expected to do much of the heavy lifting.
But so are improvements to the buildings we live and work in — think measures such as insulation — along with the appliances within them.
Lastly, shaking up the way industry operates is expected to deliver most, if not all, of the remaining future energy savings.
The loss and damage fund
At last year's UN climate talks in Egypt, one of the biggest breakthroughs was an agreement among countries for a so-called loss and damage fund.
The fund is ostensibly aimed at helping poorer and developing countries deal with the effects of a warming climate and more extreme weather.
Its establishment was also a recognition that richer countries, by and large, have been responsible for most of the greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution.
But the case for the fund and who should benefit from it are about as far as the agreement got.
Fleshing out the details of the plan has been fraught, particularly who should pay into it, how much they should pay and who should be allowed to claim money.
Even the matter of who should be in charge has been the subject of acrimony, with richer countries led by the US pushing for the Western-founded World Bank and others, such as China, resisting the call.
In a sign of Australia's position on the topic, Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said rising countries such as China and India should help compensate poorer nations exposed to climate change.
"Just because a country wasn't wealthy or was not a major emitter in 1992 doesn't mean the same is the case 30 years later," Mr Bowen said.
The global stocktake
It was at a COP meeting — in Paris in 2015 — where there was an agreement that has become the guiding light of efforts to deal with global warming.
Under that deal, countries agreed to try to limit temperature rises to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2030, or at least "well below" 2 degrees.
As part of that arrangement, parties at the UN talks in Dubai are expected to sign off on a document showing how the world is going in those efforts.
This "global stocktake" will also involve countries agreeing on how those emissions should be brought under control.
The UN in November warned that, so far, progress towards the target of 1.5 degrees was not good.
If anything, the organisation said countries, collectively, were way off course, with emissions forecast to soar far above the required levels and temperatures on track to rise up to 2.9C.
The UN said there was evidence of a growing disconnect between countries' current plans and policies and their pledges to carbon neutrality – a goal set for 2050 by many richer nations.
Advocates for climate action are likely to use the results of the global stocktake to lobby for more ambitious action at this year's conference of the parties.
Fossil fuels, and a colourful host
Hand-in-hand with the divergence between countries' actions and their words on climate is the world's ongoing dependence on fossil fuels.
Still to this day, the global economy gets about 80 per cent of its energy from a combination of coal, oil and gas.
And while the use of coal for electricity is waning rapidly in many of the world's rich countries, including Australia, it's a different story in large, developing nations such as China and India.
When it comes to oil and gas, the evidence points to increasing demand, at least for a time.
Against this backdrop, the choice of Dubai to host this year's COP has been seen as controversial.
The UAE, through its state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), is one of the world's biggest oil and gas producers, pumping an average of 3.2 million barrels a day.
Adnoc is helmed by Sultan al-Jaber, none other than the president of COP28.
The seeming contradiction between the UAE's interest in selling fossil fuels and hosting a meeting aimed at ultimately stamping out their use has been highlighted by many.
Despite this, the UAE has also wholeheartedly thrown its weight behind the twin goals of tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030 – both of which are seen as hugely ambitious.
Energy modeller Rystad is also predicting that primary energy, which now largely comes from fossil fuels, would peak by 2030 and then start falling as "cleaner and leaner" renewable capacity comes online.
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