Tim观点 签署巴黎协定十年以来，每年一次的联合国气候峰会似乎成了一个平行宇宙，与地缘政治和现实经济越来越脱节。
Tim’s view In the decade since the Paris Agreement, the annual round of UN climate summits has seemed like a parallel universe, increasingly out of touch with geopolitics and the real economy.
在近乎天真的理想主义，以及难以穿透的缩略语、行话和晦涩条约条款的丛林中，“有时我走进谈判室，与现实世界的对比再大不过了，”肯尼亚特别气候使者阿里·穆罕默德在这里告诉我。本周在土耳其安塔利亚举行的COP31上，仍有许多人希望明天就关闭石油和天然气行业，不顾能源获取和价格。化石燃料公司今年创下的破纪录利润证明，喜不喜欢，世界仍然需要大量这种东西。
Between the idealism-bordering-on-naivete, and the impenetrable thicket of acronyms, jargon, and obscure treaty provisions, “sometimes I come into negotiation rooms and the contrast with the real world cannot be any bigger,” Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s special climate envoy, told me here. There are still many people here at COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, this week who would love to see the oil and gas industry shuttered tomorrow, energy access and prices be damned. Fossil fuel companies’ record-breaking profits this year are proof that, like it or not, the world still needs a lot of this stuff.
虽然伊朗战争确实促使一些国家加速采用可再生能源，但能源安全的全球重新排序意味着，“毫无疑问，我们正在背离”在迪拜COP28上通过的逐步摆脱化石燃料的目标，穆罕默德说。而且不用说，COP上发生的任何事情对任何国家都没有真正的法律约束力。
While the Iran war certainly did drive some countries to accelerate their adoption of renewables, the global reprioritization of energy security means “there is no doubt we’re backsliding” on the goal adopted at COP28, in Dubai, to transition away from fossil fuels, Mohamed said. And needless to say, nothing that happens at COP has any real legally binding force on any country.
那么这一切究竟是为了什么？过去48小时里，我一直在安塔利亚令人抓狂地拥挤不堪的交通系统中奔波，期间多次问自己这个问题（不过我要说，COP会场本身——如果你能设法进去的话——是我们多年来最好的一处场地）。一个答案是，务实从来就不是重点。欧亚集团分析师玛丽亚·何塞·巴尔韦德说，理想主义是联合国峰会的固有特征，而非缺陷：“COP的目标本就不是为了被实现。关键在于我们想把人类带向何方。”
So what’s it all for? I’ve asked myself this question a lot in the past 48 hours, while navigating Antalya’s maddeningly overwhelmed transit system (although I will say the COP venue itself, if you can manage to get inside, is the nicest one we’ve had in years). One answer is that pragmatism was never the point. Idealism is a feature of UN summits, not a bug, Eurasia Group analyst María José Valverde said: “COP goals aren’t designed to be achieved. It’s about where we want to take humanity.”
另一个答案是，正如一位外交官今早对我所说，尽管这些事可能上不了头条，“幕后仍然有各种各样的事情在发生”，从非洲清洁烹饪炉灶的协议，到欧洲国家之间为消除各自铁路网络之间的官僚壁垒而进行的谈判——这些壁垒迫使更多商业运输转向污染更重的公路。
Another answer is that, while it may not get headlines, “there’s still all kinds of shit happening behind the scenes,” as one diplomat put it to me this morning, from deals on clean cooking stoves in Africa to negotiations among European countries to remove bureaucratic barriers between their rail networks that force more commercial traffic onto dirtier highways.
不过，尽管清洁能源采用的速度未必达到活动人士期望的程度，它已经在推动远离化石燃料的切实转型。这发生在总能源需求激增的背景下，这使得替代任何单一能源都变得更加困难。国际能源署上周报告称，如果没有自2010年以来建成的所有可再生能源，2025年全球化石燃料需求将高出8%，“相当于印度的总能源消耗量”。
And while it may not be happening at activists’ preferred pace, clean energy adoption already driving a tangible transition away from fossil fuels. That’s in spite of a surge in overall energy demand that has made it harder to displace any one source. In the absence of all renewables that have been built since 2010, the International Energy Agency reported last week, global fossil fuel demand in 2025 would have been 8% higher, “an amount equivalent to India’s total energy consumption.”
本次气候大会的重大目标是推动这一趋势，争取各国同意一个目标：到2035年，将电力在全球总能源需求中所占比例从目前的23%提高到35%。这基本上是化石燃料转型目标的另一个版本，只是从万花筒的另一端来看，可能更能让通常在此处扮演破坏者角色的产油国接受。无论在此谈判出什么，再次将是不具约束力的。
The big goal for this particular COP is to drive this trend forward by getting countries to agree on a target to raise the share of total global energy demand served by electricity from 23% today to 35% by 2035. That’s basically another version of the fossil fuel transition goal, viewed through the opposite end of the kaleidoscope, which could be more palatable to the oil-producing countries that are usually the spoilers here. Whatever is negotiated here will, again, be nonbinding.
而且，很难确切地说，迄今为止，气候大会本身在清洁能源推广进程中发挥了多大作用。但就这些会议主要起到发出长期政治信号的作用而言——这些信号支撑（如果不决定的话）企业在做能源投资决策时所依据的经济信号——气候大会的最佳结果，就是让自己失去存在的意义，因为清洁能源项目越来越多地凭借与环保意识形态无关的优势，在竞争中战胜化石燃料。
And it’s impossible to say precisely what role COP, per se, has had in the pace of the clean energy rollout up to now. But to the extent that these meetings mainly serve to send long-term political signals that buttress — if not dictate — the economic signals companies use to make energy investment decisions, the best outcome for COP is to put itself out of business, as clean energy projects increasingly beat fossil fuels on merits unrelated to environmental ideology.
“在现实世界中，事情正在发生，并不会等待谈判，”穆罕默德说。“无论你是否愿意，能源转型都将发生。”值得关注的是，12月，美国商务部的新规则将使进口中国太阳能板制造组件的成本更高，这是为了让美国太阳能公司更难依赖中国而采取的措施之一。
“In the real world, things are happening and not waiting for the negotiations,” Mohamed said. “The transition is going to happen whether you want it to or not.”Notable In December, new US Commerce Department rules will make it costlier to import Chinese manufacturing components for solar panels, as part of an effort to make it harder for US solar firms to rely on China.