Fossil fuel non-proliferation is a tougher sell than nuclear

With the election of Donald Trump, the pendulum swung far away from international efforts to tackle climate change. Nevertheless, climate diplomats who believe that it will one day swing the other way are meeting this month in Santa Marta, Colombia, at the first intergovernmental conference to focus on eliminating the use of fossil fuels.

The immediate goal is to start the process of creating an international fossil fuel “non-proliferation” treaty. The initiative was inspired by a 2020 article by the Canadian climate activist Tzeporah Berman and Mark Campanale, the British co-founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, and at least 17 governments are expected to sign up in Santa Marta to the process, which will involve drafting a text and building support for what today might seem an impossible goal. The British government has sent its climate envoy, Rachel Kyte, to “observe” proceedings.

Berman and Campanale were inspired by the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which, while not perfect, dramatically slowed an arms race that was threatening to become an existential problem for the planet. But agreeing not to acquire something you don’t yet have is very different from agreeing to give up extracting and using something on which you currently rely. Getting enough signatories to ratify a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty will surely be a very long process, if not a neverending one.

To those who nevertheless favour the treaty process, it has the merit of building a coalition of countries focused directly on eliminating the industry that is most responsible for climate change – something that the United Nations COP climate change process avoids doing, preferring to focus on “curbing emissions” to keep more of the big fossil fuel producers at the table.

Whether that shift in focus will help or hinder progress against climate change remains to be seen.

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