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No more climate game in climate change, please
If we judge by the funding forwarded to Indonesia, for example, we see a serious lack of will from both the United States and China to cooperate on climate change.
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People participate in a protest during a global day of action on climate change in Glasgow, Scotland, on Nov. 6, during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26). (AFP/Daniel Leal-Olivas)
T
he end of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, the United Kingdom, on Nov. 12 showed that, rather than embracing climate change commitments, many big countries still prefer to play the climate game. Public relations spin and empty promises are the go-to moves, but in this game, we all stand to lose.
Water covers over 80 percent of the world's surface and as our oceans begin to warm, as research by the UN Intergovernmental Climate Change Panel (ICPP) has shown time and time again, the undercurrents that define the global climate will start to change.
In August, the ICPP dropped another bombshell – global temperature increases are picking up pace and the chance of limiting the average rise to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius is highly unlikely if efforts are not ramped up now. Thus, countries must not only reveal their annual progress on their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), their NDCs must be more ambitious too.
But five years after the Paris Agreement was struck, countries have not yet standardized the deal's "rule book". Consensus on how countries' goals are to be reached and how progress should be measured continues to elude us.
Although host Prime Minister Boris Johnson summed up his hopes for COP26 in Glasgow succinctly: "Coal, cars, cash and trees," an oil field discovered off the coast of Scotland would continue to be developed. In other words, meaningful progress on phasing out coal power and internal combustion engines, as well as ramping up tree planting and development aid, exceeding US$100 billion per year if need be, would be mere talk only.
Long-festering disputes over carbon market governance and timeframes for progress checks remain unsolved.
Wealthy nations have had to heed the demands of climate activists who have been emboldened by the surging climate emergency unraveling before our eyes. Poorer nations, meanwhile, demanded richer ones make good during COP26 on their Paris Agreement commitment to provide up to $100 billion a year to help them first decarbonize their power grids.
