UNITED NATIONS, US
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Monday that the world is in “a life-or-death struggle” for survival as “ climate chaos gallops ahead” and accused the world’s 20 wealthiest countries of failing to do enough to stop the planet from overheating.
The U.N. chief said emissions
of global-warming greenhouse gases are at an all-time high and rising, and it’s
time for “a quantum level compromise” between rich developed countries that
emitted most of the heat-trapping gases and emerging economies that often feel
its worst effects.
Guterres spoke as government
representatives opened a meeting in Congo’s capital Kinshasa to prepare for the
major U.N.-led climate conference in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in
November. It’s a time of immense climate impacts around the world — from floods
that put one-third of Pakistan under water and Europe’s hottest summer in 500
years to hurricanes and typhoons that have hammered the Philippines, Cuba and
the U.S. state of Florida.
In the last few weeks,
Guterres has amped up a push for climate’s version of asking polluters pay for
what they’ve done, usually called “loss and damage,” and he said Monday that
people need action now.
“Failure to act on loss and
damage will lead to more loss of trust and more climate damage. This is a moral
imperative that cannot be ignored.”
Guterres said the COP27
meeting in Egypt “must be the place for action on loss and damage.”
In unusually critical language, he said commitments by the so-called G20 group of the world’s 20 leading economies “are coming far too little, and far too late.”
Guterres warned that current
pledges and policies “are shutting the door on our chances to limit global
temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, let alone meet the 1.5-degree goal.”
“We are in a life-or-death
struggle for our own safety today and our survival tomorrow,” he said.
“COP27 is the place for all
countries -- led by the G20 -- to show they are in this fight, and in it
together,”Guterres said. “And the best way to show it is by showing up at COP27
in Sharm el-Sheikh.”
Rich countries, especially the
United States, have emitted far more than their share of heat-trapping carbon
dioxide from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, data shows. Poor nations
like Pakistan and Cuba have been hurt far more than their share of global
carbon emissions.
Loss and damage has been
talked about for years, but richer nations have often balked at negotiating
details about paying for past climate disasters, like Pakistan’s flooding this
summer.
The issue is fundamental for the
world’s developing countries and Guterres is reminding rich nations “that they
cannot try and brush it under the carpet ... G20 nations have to take
responsibility for the great need their actions have caused,” said Mohamed Adow
of Power Shift Africa, which tries to mobilize climate action in Africa.
Princeton University climate
science and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer said in an
email that if high-income and other big emitters like China want the U.N.
convention on climate change to remain useful, “they will need to grapple
seriously with loss and damage.”
Otherwise, he said,
negotiations “are headed for interminable gridlock.”
Poor countries with low
emissions can simply refuse to discuss anything else until the issue is
resolved, Oppenheimer said. Richer countries may find a way around the issue
without paying for direct damage by paying poorer nations more to adapt to
lessen future disasters, but even then developed nations will have to pay out
money, not just make promises as they have in the past, he said.
Guterres’ remarks “highlight
what small islands and least developed countries have been arguing for decades
— that loss and damage is irrefutable and already disproportionately affecting
the most vulnerable countries and communities,” said Adelle Thomas, a climate
scientist from the Bahamas.
“We are reaching a breaking point, where developed countries must respond instead of continuing to delay action with empty promises and prolonged discussions,” she added. - AP
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