Today I cry, I breathe between waves of nausea. I know this feeling in my body; it is pain.
I keep thinking that we finally made it, that we finally understand the gravity of our situation as we get closer and closer to the brink of ecological collapse, but then we pull the rug out from under ourselves again. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the twin powers of politics and oil money have done it for us.
Right now, I feel scared for the future. I cannot imagine what level of struggle will be necessary to execute the scale of change that we need to avoid losing millions and millions of human lives, lives that could be our children or our parents, especially if they happen to be born in the Global South or what the UN called the “vulnerable countries”.
Kumi Naidoo, South Africa’s leading human rights activist, is furious. He is enraged at the way the industry lobby has undermined efforts to limit oil and gas growth: “Imagine how absurd that the largest delegation here is the fossil fuel industry. It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous has a world conference and the largest delegation is the alcohol industry. ”
Like many here, Naidoo is frustrated by the subsidies that world governments provide to the oil and gas sector, totaling $ 2.5 trillion in the past five years. He challenges us to speak more clearly: “Subsidies are the taxes of ordinary people who are going to invest in their children and in the death of their children.”
John Kerry echoed Naidoo’s anger over the grants in the closing plenary of COP26. “These fossil fuel subsidies are a definition of insanity. They are feeding the same problem that we must solve ”. Surely if there is alignment from the grassroots of Africa with the office of the president of the United States, then things will change. Yet somehow, it doesn’t seem so simple.
While the negotiation of the final text is a critically important part of this climate meeting, it is far from the only thing that is happening.
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In the face of growing frustration with the IPCC process, other actors are taking matters into their own hands and, in this area, there has been much progress. Two stand out, in particular. The first is the announcement of a new coalition, the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA), with 12 nation-states committed to phasing out all oil and gas production. This is historic because the UN process has never addressed oil and gas. As climate leader Harjeet Singh put it, “This elephant hasn’t even been in the room.”
The second interesting development is the growing support for the new call for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. Youth activist Fridays for the Future Farzana Faruk Jhumu, a young woman from Bangladesh, called on all young people to support this treaty, calling fossil fuels “the weapons of mass destruction of our generation.”
Within the formal treaty process, the sum of the promises of all the countries of the world made here in Glasgow would lead us to a 2.4C warmer world. If these objectives are really achieved, of course. But we must also add efforts outside of the formal treaty, such as the agreement between the United States and the EU to reduce methane emissions (methane is the most dangerous of all greenhouse gases). The International Energy Association published a new analysis last week predicting that if we take into account all the bilateral and civil society agreements, we could be on the 1.8C track. That would be good news.
Opinion: Grief over the weather is natural when looking at a world that will continue to heat up if we can’t stop #GHG #emissions. Hope is eternal though, write @karenmahon for @natobserver. #Climate crisis # COP26 # COP26xCNO
There are many numbers and there will be many more analysis on how far we have or have not advanced. In everything that has been said at the UN climate summit, one thing I have heard stands out above all else. We must remember that this is not really about temperatures and parts per million, it is about lives.
Again, Naidoo said it best: “1.5 is what I already heard in 2015 in the Pacific, where children and young people sang ‘1.5 to stay alive’. But 1.5 to stay alive is no longer enough. The new motto of the people in the most vulnerable countries is ‘1.5 we can survive’ because we are at 1.1 now and we already look at the magnitude of the extreme weather events that we are seeing. Lives are being lost right now! It just happens that most lives are those of people of color. “
Today my heart breaks, but it’s okay. I have learned from 30 years of this work that heartbreak is healthy. I remember the seminar I attended yesterday on ecological anxiety with climate psychologist Carolyn Hickman, who reminded us that climate emotions are cyclical. We fall, we get back up, and we are getting stronger for it. This is how we build the resilience to take the next steps on what will be a very long journey ahead.
When asked what happens next, Naidoo gave the crowd of activists and journalists a very clear inspiration: “Don’t lose hope. Those who are pushing for a weak result want you to feel desperate, they want you to feel that our efforts don’t count. And the message we must take from this is that this is a time of intensification of resistance … We are going to put aside, regain our courage and do everything possible … because the window of opportunity is small and it is closing. quickly.
“History will judge us very harshly if we do not respond in a different way than our governments and the corporations that dominate our governments are responding.”
Listen, listen! Regardless of what governments finally agree to in the latest update of the Paris climate agreement, this fight is just beginning. Today is a day to cry, take a breath and then tomorrow we will find our hope once again.
Reference-www.nationalobserver.com