COP29 Should Be About Justice, Equality, and Graciously Picking up a High Bill
On the climate crisis and week 13 (March 25-31, 2024)
While I type this, COP29 should have ended, but it will continue into the weekend; it's a COP tradition. I stopped attending the annual climate meetings after Marrakech in 2016. I have been invited nearly every year since, and I wondered each time if my contribution to the conference would weigh up against my contribution to the problem we are trying to solve there. Since I was never within a reasonable public transport distance from the meeting and was not a negotiator, I decided to follow the news via the media.
The latest I heard is that there is still huge disappointment amongst the developing countries about the unwillingness of the rich countries to sufficiently provide the financial support these countries need to solve their climate challenges. They are not responsible for the devastation climate change is causing in their societies, and they expect a fair financial package from the rich countries. They consider the annual 250 billion dollars by 2035 to help them shift to a low-carbon economy and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather a fraction of what they should receive.
There is so much at stake for these countries, and it is all bloody unfair. At 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming, our present policy trajectory, two billion people will be exposed to extreme heat, and 99.7 percent live in the global South.
Do we still plan to transition away from fossil fuels?
What I also find worrying is the lack of reference to last year's most notable agreement to "transition away from fossil fuels." Looking at the seriousness of the existential challenge the world is facing, one might have expected stronger language. Imagine a drunk driver causing a deadly accident and pleasing a judge by promising in a non-legally binding statement to transition away from whiskey.
But even this weak text, heralded last year as a huge step forward (and diplomatically, it was indeed), is too sensitive to mention in Baku. In the latest draft on the "mitigation work programme," there are zero links back to this statement. Tomorrow is an extra COP day, so it will be a fight about who will pay how much.
Unfortunately, the problems caused by or related to climate change will only exponentially increase, just as the Keeling curve that has been tracking atmospheric CO2 since 1959 is ever steeper, bending upwards. If, and that is very likely, we continue to do too little too late to mitigate climate change, it will get worse before it gets worse.
Week 13: March 25-31, 2024
We arrived at Week 13 in late March in our daily journey through 2024 in the last 52 days of the year. You will likely remember the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore from that week. It was also the week that Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX exchange, was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. And in a world where many have nothing while a small group has too much money, someone paid more than 700,000 dollars for the door Kate Winslet held on to while Leo drowned in the movie Titanic. There must be better causes to spend your money on.
That week, the media paid less attention to an Ipsos poll for Euronews that showed that more than half of the European voters "believe the fight against climate change is a priority." At the same time, another 32 percent said it was important but not a priority. I don't know if this number should make me happy or make me cry. If your house is on fire and only a bit more than half of the people watching believe that calling the fire brigade is a priority, you wouldn't be happy. Now imagine those people living in the same burning apartment complex as you, and they still don't care.
Searching through the news from that week in late March, I also read that the world wastes over one million meals a day. That is nearly 20 percent of all food produced worldwide. Meanwhile, chronic hunger is increasing worldwide.
One more snippet of the news from late March is the finding that melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica slow the Earth's rotation. We have far bigger worries about climate change, but if you wonder if this will affect your sleep, scientists are discussing postponing the one-second adjustment from 2026 until 2029. There must be other causes of my climate-related insomnia.
Some photos from week 13:
You are welcome to join the chat and share your views on climate change and your memories of late March. What did you see and do? And see what others experienced elsewhere at the same time:
We should have had you as a negotiator
The last week of March was a rough one for Alex and our planet. He is in a hurry and losing patience because our planet is in trouble and we seem to run roughshod over ideas that the negotiators at COP “play with” and then can’t
seem to reach agreement. It appears to me (a k a IMO) all they talk about is money
— plans and policies are “discussed” and disappear.
How very disheartening…
Alex, I know this sounds trite, but “I feel your anger”. 😠