{"id":199720,"date":"2021-11-22T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=199720"},"modified":"2021-11-19T10:43:28","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T10:43:28","slug":"as-the-world-burns-glasgows-cop26-called-a-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/11\/as-the-world-burns-glasgows-cop26-called-a-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"As the World Burns, Glasgow\u2019s COP26 Called a Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cWildly here without control,<\/em>
\nNature reigns and rules the whole\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

18 Nov 2021 –<\/em> Scotland\u2019s most famous poet, Robert Burns, wrote those lines in 1787. If only the delegates to COP26, the United Nations climate summit that wrapped up last Saturday in Glasgow, had heeded his words. The negotiations ended with a document dubbed the \u201cGlasgow Climate Pact\u201d which many climate activists called a failure. \u201cWe should call it the \u2018Glasgow suicide pact\u2019 for the poorest in the world,\u201d Asad Rehman of the COP26 Coalition said on the Democracy Now! news hour. \u201cIt does not keep us below the 1.5 degree [Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit] guard rail. In fact, it heads us closer to 3 degrees [C, or 5.4 degrees F]\u2026They\u2019re ramming through so many loopholes that it makes a mockery of these climate negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n

One draft of the climate pact included an historic first, calling for \u201cthe phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels.\u201d Polluting nations and armies of fossil fuel industry lobbyists managed to dilute that down to \u201cthe phase-out of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels.\u201d Thus, coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, can still be burned with the promise that the resulting pollution will be \u201cabated\u201d with carbon capture and storage, an unproven technology. And the same fossil fuel corporations that have profited for so long while sowing disinformation about the climate will continue to enjoy lavish subsidies at taxpayer expense.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis summit was betrayal,\u201d Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a climate justice activist from the Philippines, said on Democracy Now! \u201cIt is painful for me, knowing that the Philippines is such a vulnerable country for the climate crisis and that we know that we are hit year after year, month after month, with climate impacts.\u201d The Philippines, described as the most storm-vulnerable nation on earth, has been hard hit by a succession of especially destructive, climate change-fueled typhoons over the past decade. \u201cAll countries,\u201d she added, \u201cshould be phasing out the fossil fuel industry. That doesn\u2019t just stop at coal, but also oil and gas, which the U.S. and the U.K. conveniently took out of the text.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indigenous land defenders from the Amazon were also in Glasgow for COP26. The world\u2019s largest rainforest is called \u201cthe lungs of the planet\u201d for the vital role it plays in absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. \u201cWe must first change our relationship to nature, change the way we think about the world, and really put at the center of our thinking our connection to life and our commitment to future generations,\u201d Domingo Peas, an Achuar indigenous leader from the Ecuadorian Amazon, said on Democracy Now! \u201cThere are 30 indigenous nations and 30 million hectares of intact forest that are at stake. We must protect this\u2026The forest is calling on us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States and European nations built their enormous wealth by burning coal with abandon for over a century and a half, a cheap but dirty way to achieve growth. The U.S. remains the single largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, with close to twice the total that China has emitted, based on 2017 data. China is now by far the largest emitter globally.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the U.S., the U.K., and most European Union nations have been able to decrease their reliance on coal, shifting to oil, fracked gas, and renewable sources.<\/p>\n

Poor, developing nations haven\u2019t contributed significantly to the overall climate crisis, but are suffering disproportionately. To recover from disasters, to adapt to the changing climate, and to build their economies responsibly toward a zero carbon future, these countries need money. COP26 was supposed to deliver on long-promised financing for these needs, but failed to do so.<\/p>\n

At COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, the U.S. and other developed countries pledged $100 billion per year to developing and climate-vulnerable nations from 2020 through 2025. Only a fraction of those funds have materialized, much of it as loans, not as climate aid. Meanwhile, a consortium of African nations recently estimated that the true cost for them to effectively respond to climate change would be closer to $1.3 trillion per year. Polluters should pay, and the United States should lead the way.<\/p>\n

Robert Burns died in 1796, when the age of coal was in its infancy. The current National Poet of Scotland is Kathleen Jamie. Inspired by the River Clyde that flows through Glasgow, this week she penned \u201cWhat the Clyde said, after COP26,\u201d which ends,<\/p>\n

\u201csure, I\u2019m a river, <\/em>
\nbut I can take a side.<\/em>
\nFrom this day, I\u2019d rather keep afloat, <\/em>
\nlike wee folded paper boats, <\/em>
\nthe hopes of the young folk<\/em>
\nchanting at my bank, <\/em>
\nfear in their spring-bright eyes<\/em>
\nso hear this: fail them, and I will rise.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Amy Goodman is the host of \u201c<\/em>Democracy Now!\u201d a daily international TV\/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of <\/em>Breaking the Sound Barrier, released in paperback and now a <\/em>New York Times best-seller.<\/em><\/p>\n

Denis Moynihan is the co-founder of <\/em>Democracy Now! Since 2002, he has participated in the organization\u2019s worldwide distribution, infrastructure development, and the coordination of complex live broadcasts from many continents. He lives in Denver where he is developing a new noncommercial community radio station.<\/em><\/p>\n

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 democracynow.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

18 Nov 2021 – \u201cWe should call it the \u2018Glasgow suicide pact\u2019 for the poorest in the world,\u201d Asad Rehman of the COP26 Coalition said. \u201cIt does not keep us below the 1.5 degree Celsius guard rail. In fact, it heads us closer to 3 degrees [C, or 5.4 degrees F]\u2026They\u2019re ramming through so many loopholes that it makes a mockery of these climate negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":65754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[229,1023,686,2604,2716,401,2721,993,685,291,639,124],"class_list":["post-199720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","tag-activism","tag-banksters","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-cop26","tag-environment","tag-glasgow","tag-global-warming","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-military","tag-uk","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}