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Rich nations must deliver on climate change promises

by

#meta[ag-author]
20221114112625
20221114

With COP27 in­to its sec­ond week in Egypt, the T&T Guardian to­day joins with the UK Guardian and more than 30 news­pa­pers and me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tions in more than 20 coun­tries for a joint ed­i­to­r­i­al on what needs to be done to meet the world’s cli­mate change goals.

Cli­mate change is a glob­al prob­lem that re­quires co-op­er­a­tion be­tween all na­tions. That’s why to­day, more than 30 news­pa­pers and me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tions in more than 20 coun­tries have tak­en a com­mon view about what needs to be done. Time is run­ning out. Rather than get­ting out of fos­sil fu­els and in­to clean en­er­gy, many wealthy na­tions are rein­vest­ing in oil and gas, fail­ing to cut emis­sions fast enough and hag­gling over the aid they are pre­pared to send to poor coun­tries. All this while the plan­et hur­tles to­wards the point of no re­turn—where cli­mate chaos be­comes ir­re­versible.

Since the COP26 UN cli­mate sum­mit in Glas­gow 12 months ago, coun­tries have on­ly promised to do one fifti­eth of what is need­ed to stay on track to keep tem­per­a­tures with­in 1.5°C of pre-in­dus­tri­al lev­els. No con­ti­nent has avoid­ed ex­treme weath­er dis­as­ters this year — from floods in Pak­istan to heat­waves in Eu­rope, and from for­est fires in Aus­tralia to hur­ri­canes in the US. Giv­en that these came about from el­e­vat­ed tem­per­a­tures of about 1.1°C, the world can ex­pect far worse to come.

As many na­tions seek to re­duce their re­liance on Rus­sia, the world is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a “gold rush” for new fos­sil fu­el projects. These are cast as tem­po­rary sup­ply mea­sures, but they risk lock­ing the plan­et in­to ir­re­versible dam­age. All this un­der­lines that hu­man­i­ty has to end its ad­dic­tion to fos­sil fu­els. If re­new­able en­er­gy was the norm, there would be no cli­mate emer­gency.

The world’s poor­est peo­ple will bear the brunt of the de­struc­tion wrought by drought, melt­ing ice sheets and crop fail­ures. To shield these groups from the loss of life and liveli­hoods will re­quire mon­ey. De­vel­op­ing coun­tries, says one in­flu­en­tial re­port, need $2 tril­lion an­nu­al­ly to cut their green­house gas emis­sions and cope with cli­mate break­down.

Rich coun­tries ac­count for just one in eight peo­ple in the world to­day but are re­spon­si­ble for half of green­house gas­es. These na­tions have a clear moral re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to help. De­vel­op­ing na­tions should be giv­en enough cash to ad­dress the dan­ger­ous con­di­tions they did lit­tle to cre­ate—es­pe­cial­ly as a glob­al re­ces­sion looms.

Rich na­tions should de­liv­er on the promise of pre­vi­ous­ly com­mit­ted funds —such as the $100bn a year from 2020—to sig­nal their se­ri­ous­ness. As a bare min­i­mum, a wind­fall tax on the com­bined prof­its of the largest oil and gas com­pa­nies—es­ti­mat­ed at al­most $100 bil­lion in the first three months of the year—needs to be en­act­ed. The Unit­ed Na­tions was right to call for the cash to be used to sup­port the most vul­ner­a­ble. But such a levy would on­ly be the start. Poor na­tions al­so car­ry debts that make it im­pos­si­ble to re­cov­er af­ter cli­mate-re­lat­ed dis­as­ters or pro­tect them­selves from fu­ture ones. Cred­i­tors should be gen­er­ous in writ­ing off loans for those on the front­line of the cli­mate emer­gency.

These mea­sures need not wait for co-or­di­nat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al ac­tion. Coun­tries could im­ple­ment them on re­gion­al or na­tion­al lev­els. A na­tion’s cu­mu­la­tive emis­sions must be the ba­sis of its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to act. While pri­vate fi­nance can help, the onus is on big his­tor­i­cal emit­ters to stump up the mon­ey.

Solv­ing the cri­sis is the moon­shot of our times. Get­ting to the moon suc­ceed­ed with­in a decade be­cause huge re­sources were de­vot­ed to it. A sim­i­lar com­mit­ment is need­ed now. But an eco­nom­ic cri­sis has re­duced rich coun­tries’ ap­petite for spend­ing and the plan­et risks be­ing trapped in fos­sil-fu­el-de­pen­dence by a rear-guard ac­tion of big busi­ness. Yet, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, cen­tral banks across the world lu­bri­cat­ed states’ ex­pen­di­ture by buy­ing up their own gov­ern­ments’ bonds. The tril­lions of dol­lars need­ed to deal with the eco­log­i­cal emer­gency de­mands such rad­i­cal think­ing re­turns.

This is no time for ap­a­thy or com­pla­cen­cy; the ur­gency of the mo­ment is up­on us. The UN Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change must be about the pow­er of ar­gu­ment not the ar­gu­ment of pow­er. Key to main­tain­ing the con­sen­sus in Egypt is not to let dis­putes over trade and war in Ukraine block glob­al cli­mate diplo­ma­cy. The UN process may not be per­fect. But it has pro­vid­ed na­tions with a tar­get to save the plan­et, which must be pur­sued at COP27 to stave off an ex­is­ten­tial risk to hu­man­i­ty.


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