Jonathan and Geffen, my dearest children of all, I would like to apologize to you today. We have failed and disappointed you, we have failed, we have made mistakes, we have not done enough to atone for the mistake, and we still do not even understand what mistake we made. We’ve sold your future for lentil stew. You and your contemporaries will pay the price big, and today I can do nothing but offer you a hollow and weak apology.
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The original sin of our mistake is the decades in which we continued to use and expand the use of fossil fuels, even as scientists began to warn of the dangers of global warming. But that’s not what I want to apologize for this time. Nor do I want to apologize for the fact that even though six years ago, at the Paris Conference, we agreed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees we did almost nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb the use of fossil fuels. At most, we slowed the rate of increase.
My apology is that even now, after a year of continuous climatic disasters – which included deadly heat waves in Canada and the northwestern United States, devastating floods in Germany and New York, huge fires in Siberia and the western United States and summer temperatures in the poles – at the end of a conference The last and best “save the world, we still do not do enough, do not understand the severity of the situation, the existential danger facing you and everyone without quick, broad and determined action against the climate crisis. Even when all the information is before us, even when the situation is already so serious that we can see the climate crisis in our eyes, feel the consequences only this morning, when I took you to the garden and we are all dressed in summer clothes in mid-November, even at this point we can still not lift our heads. Our small and immediate and look at the full picture.
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Demonstrators in Glasgow
(Photo: EPA)
The climate conference in Glasgow, COP26, which ended yesterday, was not defined by its organizers as a complete failure, but in any significant measure it failed, did not meet the expectations set or the needs of the world. Everyone agreed that more, much more, needs to be done to deal with the climate crisis, and the drafters of the summaries hope they will send a clear signal to investors and companies that more needs to be done to stop the train galloping into the abyss. But outside the courtroom the atmosphere regarding the summaries obtained was not exactly optimistic.
“The final deal does not match the urgency and scale required,” said Shauna Aminath, the environment minister for the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, one of the countries expected to be the first to be wiped off the map as a result of rising sea levels. “What seems to other factors as balanced and pragmatic summaries will not help the Maldives adjust themselves in time. It will be too late for us.”
The failure of the conference is so profound that no principled and non-binding summaries have been received on issues on which there is a scientific consensus. For example, fossil fuels, the use of which must be completely stopped in order to meet the target of a full reset of carbon emissions by 2050. According to the New York Times, in the last hours of yesterday’s debates, there was controversy over the intention to include a phase out. And the use of coal and government subsidies for oil and gas. This relatively soft statement was further softened in light of opposition from India, which argued that fossil fuels were needed for its further development. Eventually, the “break” was replaced by a “phase down”.
“Countries still do not understand that we are in a state of emergency, and that we need to cut emissions much faster in this decade, or that any hope of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees will be lost,” German climate scientist Prof. Dr. Nicholas Hohn told the New York Times. .
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Climate activist Greta Tonberg is speaking at a conference in Glasgow
(Photo: Reuters)
Despite this, not everything is lost, and the conference did not only provide bad news. Thus, the United States and China agreed on a reduction in emissions over the next decade, in which China undertook for the first time to develop a program to reduce methane emissions, a particularly powerful greenhouse gas, and begin reducing coal use in 2026. Leaders of more than 100 countries, including Brazil, The United States, China and Russia have pledged to halt forest deforestation by 2030 – an agreement that, if maintained, would protect 85% of the world’s forests. In another agreement, more than 100 countries have pledged to reduce their methane emissions by 30% by the end of the decade. And India has finally pledged to reach a full reset of its greenhouse gas emissions, albeit only by 2070 – 20 years after the date set by climate scientists.
The agreement in Glasgow also calls on countries to reconvene next year, with the aim of introducing more significant commitments to reduce emissions by 2030. But despite everything, in the end the conference ended with too few commitments, most of which still hang in the air. “We have made much greater progress than we could have imagined two years ago. But it is still not close enough,” said Helen Mountford, vice president of climate and economics at the Independent Research Institute World Resources Institute. Tremendous progress, far from what the world needs at the moment.
All in all, the Glasgow Conference failed. The leaders, mostly white and older men, who are themselves responsible for the situation we are facing, do not understand the severity of the situation and the magnitude of the moment they are facing. Maybe because it’s not a problem they’ll have to deal with themselves. They will not be replaced by other people next year, and after the climatic disasters of the past year there is also not too much hope that their eyes will suddenly open and they will hurry to action.
The generation of leaders has failed future generations, my sons and your future children have failed you. There are many reasons to despair, but the situation is still not lost. We have not yet passed the last point of no return, there is another possibility to save this world. If the current leaders are unable to do so, one should take to the streets and shake the ground beneath their feet; Pressure needs to be applied to the entire system that supports the fossil fuel industry, to attack those who pour money into it and subsidize it, those who help it behind the scenes.
All of these things are already being done, they are part of the reason we have even managed to record even the meager achievements of the Glasgow Conference, but now they need to become the central framework of the struggle. There is no time to be nice, kind or diplomatic. It is a battle for the future, in many ways the only battle that matters. And it’s starting now.
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