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Tag: Glasgow climate conference

  • India’s last-minute coal protection at COP26 hid position of China, US

    More than two weeks of world local weather negotiations got here down in the long run to India watering down language on the usage of coal. But the seen resistance from India on the ultimate textual content of the Glasgow Climate Pact helped conceal the position performed by China and even the US within the weakened final result.
    A dramatic technique of revision to the ultimate textual content unfolded within the closing minutes of talks on Saturday, earlier than COP26 President Alok Sharma might convey down the gavel, all surrounding a single paragraph. The sticking level: a name to speed up the “phase-out” of unabated coal energy, from vegetation that don’t use carbon-capture know-how.
    In the top sport, which lasted for greater than an hour within the plenary corridor, China stated it might just like the language on lowering coal use to be nearer to the textual content that it had agreed to in a joint assertion with the US earlier within the week. But it was left to India to spell out the last-minute change. Instead of agreeing to “phase-out” coal energy, India’s atmosphere minister, Bhupender Yadav, learn out a brand new model of the paragraph that used “phase-down” to explain what must occur to coal use. That formulation made it into the ultimate textual content endorsed by virtually 200 nations.

    Several nations, together with Switzerland and the Marshall Islands, instantly complained that different delegations had been blocked from re-opening the textual content, whereas India had its means in a late adjustment. “I apologise for the way this process has unfolded, and I am deeply sorry,” Sharma stated from the stage, near tears. “I also understand the deep disappointment. But as you have already noted, it’s also vital that we protect this package.”
    The maneuvering highlights one of many key tensions at this yr’s United Nations local weather negotiations. China, the US and India are the three greatest polluters, and all three have now pledged to zero-out their emissions within the many years forward. Yet India and China pursued last-ditch interventions to melt language on coal utilization, and the US performed a task in accepting that weaker place, calling into query their short-term dedication to curb coal utilization.
    It was the US and China who first embraced the time period “phase-down” of their bilateral local weather settlement, which was adopted with nice fanfare in the midst of COP26. Before the dramatic last plenary, the US even signaled acceptance of the “phase-down” language that had been used within the joint assertion with China, based on an individual acquainted with the US place who requested to not be named.

    “You have to phase down coal before you can — quote — end coal,” John Kerry, the US local weather envoy, stated at a press convention after the ultimate textual content had been adopted.
    At an earlier plenary session on Saturday, a bunch of nations had expressed opposition to completely different bits of the textual content. Iran was among the many group that supported India’s and China’s place on coal. As the gavel got here down, although, it was India left wanting like the first holdout on behalf of coal. Yet two folks acquainted with late sideline discussions within the plenary corridor involving Sharma stated China performed a serious position in pushing for softer language.
    China’s diplomats made it clear in non-public that the world’s high emitter was reluctant to incorporate extra stringent formulations on ending coal. “To shout slogans could cause unnecessary negative impacts on the pace. It could be like, ‘pull up seedings to help them grow,’” stated Li Zheng, a member of China’s delegation at COP26, in an interview on Friday, utilizing a Chinese maxim. “To demonise fossil fuel will only hurt ourselves.”

    With the world mired in an vitality crunch, India and China have each turned to mining extra coal. That context was going to make local weather talks tough, particularly any restrictions on the usage of the dirtiest fossil gasoline. Even within the US, the place President Joe Biden is making an attempt to go a sweeping local weather bundle, has needed to bend to the desire of elected lawmakers from coal constituencies.
    Experts following the negotiations carefully pushed again on the concept India needs to be seen as liable for the late change to the settlement, which should be produced by consensus. Some observers noticed developed nations sharing accountability for the watered-down coal language as a result of that they had resisted extra monetary commitments to poor nations.
    “The problem is not India,” Brandon Wu, director of coverage & campaigns for Action Aid USA, wrote on Twitter. “The problem is the US and rich countries refusing to couch fossil-fuel phaseout in the context of global equity.”

  • Saudi Arabia denies taking part in local weather saboteur at Glasgow

    The tightest of smiles on his face and the material of his conventional thobe swirling about him as he strides by way of a hallway at UN local weather talks, Saudi Arabia’s vitality minister expresses shock at repeated complaints that the world’s largest oil producer is working behind the scenes to sabotage negotiations.
    “What you have been hearing is a false allegation and a cheat and a lie,” Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al Saud stated this week on the talks in Glasgow, Scotland. He was responding to journalists urgent for a response to claims that Saudi Arabia’s negotiators have been working to dam local weather measures that will threaten demand for oil.
    “We have been working well” with the pinnacle of the UN local weather talks and others, Prince Abdulaziz stated.

    Negotiators from about 200 international locations are developing towards a weekend deadline to seek out consensus on subsequent steps to chop the world’s fossil gas emissions and in any other case fight local weather change.
    Saudi Arabia’s participation in local weather talks itself can appear incongruous — a kingdom that has grow to be rich and highly effective due to oil concerned in negotiations the place a core concern is lowering consumption of oil and different fossil fuels. While pledging to hitch emission-cutting efforts at dwelling, Saudi leaders have made clear they intend to pump and promote their oil so long as demand lasts.
    Saudi Arabia’s workforce in Glasgow has launched proposals starting from a name to give up negotiations — they typically stretch into early morning hours — at 6 pm day by day to what local weather negotiation veterans allege are advanced efforts to play nation factions towards each other with the intention of blocking settlement on powerful steps to wrench the world away from coal, gasoline and oil.
    That is the “Saudis’ proposal, by the way. They’re like, ‘Let’s just not work at nights and just accept that this is not going to be ambitious’” on the subject of quick cuts in fossil gas air pollution that’s wrecking the local weather, stated Jennifer Tollmann, an analyst at E3G, a European local weather suppose tank.

    And then “if other countries want to agree with Saudi, they can blame Saudi Arabia,” Tollmann stated.
    Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and head of a gaggle of senior political leaders on local weather, choked up as she informed Sky News that Saudi Arabia was taking part in “dirty games” and searching for to intestine essential, consensus-building elements of draft agreements out of the talks.
    Saudi Arabia lengthy has been accused of taking part in a spoiler within the local weather talks, and this yr it’s the predominant nation singled out thus far by negotiators, talking privately, and observers, talking publicly. Russia and Australia are additionally lumped in with Saudi Arabia on the talks as international locations that see their futures as depending on coal, pure gasoline or oil and as working for a Glasgow local weather deal that doesn’t threaten that.
    Despite efforts to diversify the economic system, oil accounts for greater than half of Saudi Arabia’s income, protecting the dominion and royal household afloat and secure. About half of Saudi staff nonetheless work for the general public sector, their wage paid largely by oil.

    And there’s China, whose dependence on coal makes it the world’s present largest local weather polluter. It argues it could’t change to cleaner vitality as quick because the West says it should, though the United States and China did collectively pledge to hurry up their efforts to chop emissions.
    A core concern within the talks: Scientists and the United Nations say the world has lower than a decade to chop its fossil gas and agricultural emissions roughly in half if it desires to keep away from extra catastrophic situations of world warming.
    Not surprisingly, island nations that will disappear underneath the rising oceans at a better degree of warming are the bloc at Glasgow pushing hardest for essentially the most stringent deal out of this summit.
    Meanwhile, local weather advocates accuse the United States and European Union of thus far failing to throw their weight behind the calls for of the island nations, though the US and the EU typically wait till the previous couple of days of local weather talks to take laborious stands on debated factors.
    The United States — the world’s worst local weather polluter traditionally and a significant oil and gasoline producer — will get loads of criticism in its personal proper. The Climate Action Network dishonored the Biden administration with its “Fossil of the Day” award to President Joe Biden for coming to Glasgow final week with formidable local weather speak however failing to hitch a pledge to wean his nation off coal or to rein in US oil manufacturing.
    Jennifer Morgan, government director of the Greenpeace environmental group, stated different governments want “to isolate the Saudi delegation” if they need the local weather convention to succeed..
    Saudi Arabia was positive with becoming a member of in governments’ climate-pledge fever earlier than the talks. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman introduced within the runup to Glasgow that the dominion would zero out its carbon emissions by 2060.
    But Saudi leaders for years have vowed to pump the final molecule of oil from their kingdom earlier than world demand ends — an goal {that a} quick international change from fossil fuels would frustrate.
    “Naked and cynical,” says Alden Meyer, a senior affiliate on the E3G local weather analysis group, of Saudi Arabia’s function in international local weather discussions.

  • Obama appeals to younger activists to remain in local weather struggle

    At 19, Glasgow faculty scholar Ross Hamilton doesn’t assume extremely of world leaders — “they chat a lot of” nonsense — or count on them to perform something on an issue he cares deeply about, local weather change.
    But there’s one former world chief Hamilton trusts, at the least sufficient to hitch a number of hundred Glasgow faculty college students crowding exterior their faculty at the hours of darkness Monday in hopes of a glimpse of him: Barack Obama. “I’ve always liked him. I feel as if he’s pretty honest.”
    The former US president, one of many leaders chargeable for the 2015 Paris local weather accord, got here to the UN international local weather talks in Glasgow, wielding his cross-generational enchantment to induce annoyed local weather activists to remain within the struggle. Even 5 years out of workplace, and now 60, Obama nonetheless claims a rapport with liberal and reasonable younger folks in a manner that President Joe Biden, 78, may not be capable of pull off.
    Inside the glass-fronted constructing the place Hamilton and different college students of Glasgow’s Strathclyde University had been ready for him to emerge, Obama was sitting round a desk with a dozen local weather advocates from world wide, listening to them out and inspiring them.

    Obama was in shirtsleeves and tieless, his hair whiter than throughout his presidency.
    “The success of the movement shouldn’t be diminished even if some of the outcomes” have fallen quick, Obama advised the gathering of climate-focused folks of their 20s and 30s. They included a lawmaker, a filmmaker, authorized advocate, personal and public businesspeople, basis leaders and heads of activist teams.
    “The question is, where are the countries that really met our expectations? And it turns out those are the places where there was pressure, where there was political mobilisation, where there were activists,” Obama advised them.
    It’s all “going to depend on you guys to apply it,” he added.
    Obama as president launched packages to maneuver the US extra towards renewable gas and away from coal, though President Donald Trump rolled again most of them.
    Not all youthful individuals are Obama followers.

    Ugandan local weather activist Vanessa Nakate tweeted Monday that she was 13 when the United States, below Obama’s management, was amongst wealthy nations promising $100 billion a yr to poor nations to assist them struggle and deal with warming, however stated these nations broke the promise.
    Nakate advised The Associated Press on Monday that she wasn’t attacking the previous president, “but that is me speaking the truth.”
    “This money was promised, but it hasn’t been delivered,” Nakate stated.
    Especially in Europe, younger activists are credited with pressuring governments to confront local weather change. Most famously, teenager Greta Thunberg in 2018 launched a local weather motion that has since drawn lots of of hundreds to weekly protests to demand governments finish their dependence on coal, pure gasoline and oil.
    After the Paris deal, Glasgow was billed because the talks the place roughly 200 governments would put the accord into motion.
    Last Friday, Thunberg, now 18, branded the talks a “failure” after their first of two weeks. Speaking to tens of hundreds of younger local weather demonstrators protesting Friday within the summit’s host metropolis, Thunberg stated nationwide delegations at Glasgow had been carving out loopholes for each pledge and “greenwashing” their very own nations’ emissions.
    Young folks had been discovering it arduous to imagine a local weather motion that had mobilised so many may fail, Luisa Neubauer, a pacesetter of Thunberg’s motion in Germany, advised Obama.
    Neubauer advised Obama she feared disillusionment was undermining peoples’ religion in democracy, “as people, especially activists, lose confidence in their governmental pledges, in what often turns out empty promises, in the lack of honesty about past failures.”
    Stay the course, Obama advised local weather activists.
    “Don’t think that you can ignore politics,” Obama stated earlier, in a speech on the talks web site that noticed the previous president draw quick standing ovations.
    “You don’t have to be happy about it, but you can’t ignore it. You can’t be too pure for it,” Obama stated, devoting a lot of his speech to the younger activists he stated he got here to Glasgow to be with it.
    “It’s part of the process that is going to deliver all of us,” he stated.

  • ‘Earth began to purge us too’: slam poet brings refugee voices to Glasgow

    She heard them when she spoke to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, and when she met Syrians at a camp in Jordan: the identical cries of the dispossessed that rang throughout her personal childhood, when she escaped from Darfur.
    Now, Sudanese-American poet Emtithal “Emi” Mahmoud – topped world champion on the 2015 Individual World Poetry Slam in Washington DC – is carrying the message of these voices to world leaders on the local weather summit in Scotland.
    Her mission, she defined to Reuters, is “to just get the most vulnerable people’s voices into spaces where we’re not normally represented”.
    “At 11 years old I saw my neighbour’s house crumble before my eyes,” she writes in her poem entitled ‘Di Baladna’, or ‘Our Land’ in Arabic, which she unveils on Monday on the COP 26 U.N. local weather summit in Glasgow.
    “Our country was already locked in turmoil and now the earth began to purge us too,” it reads.
    As a refugee herself and a goodwill ambassador for U.N. refugee company UNHCR, she has spoken to fellow refugees across the globe. She noticed how a lot they’d in widespread.

    “…You realise that the same vulnerabilities and issues and sensitivities and crises that we witnessed during the Darfur crisis are being repeated over and over,” she mentioned.
    “I think I try to answer the question a little bit of how it is that we can bring everyone into the same cause that a lot of us are in right now.”
    At COP26, she will probably be interesting for pressing motion but additionally highlighting the efforts refugees are already making to adapt to their habitats.
    “Is the situation dire? Absolutely, yeah. But can it be changed? It can, and they’ve already changed it themselves. But that work can go to waste if we don’t support them sometime soon.”