XALIMANEWS- The work of COP29 on the future of the climate started yesterday, Monday November 11, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan, without the major leaders of the planet. Have they avoided debates on their responsibilities as big polluters? The question remains unresolved in a geopolitical context exacerbated by the influence of a trade war between the great powers. If some, like the United States of America (USA), cling indiscriminately to their fossil fuels to maintain their economic supremacy, others, like China, impose market shares on renewable energies. Between duty of compensation by means of “carbon market” and the race for world leadership, the poorest and least polluting people continue to pay the climate bill for the richest with their lives.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, from January to September 2024, the average global surface temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees. This rise in temperatures due to greenhouse gas emissions is leading to multifaceted disasters, including floods and lethal heat surges across the world.
This report from the intergovernmental group of climate experts also indicates the paradox of the so-called countries of the South which pollute the least and which pay the heaviest price in terms of severe environmental impact. And this is precisely one of the points of the international treaty called the Paris Agreement, signed in 2015, and which recognizes that 100 billion dollars in loans and donations must be devoted each year, from 2020, to financing projects enabling countries to adapt to climate change.
Is this not an ostensible desire to redistribute resources to the countries of the South as compensation by the 39 most industrialized countries but unfortunately this has not led to much? It is therefore difficult to date to convert this desire into concrete action and this is easily understood due to the divergent interests in the light of competition on the major financial markets.
The United States of America, the world’s leading producer of fossil fuels; i.e. twice as much as Saudi Arabia is reluctant to lose this prestige in the face of China, which is very committed to the production of clean techniques with 80% of the photovoltaic cell market and 70% of the wind turbine market. The former American president, newly re-elected, Donald Trump is the standard bearer of climate skeptics and does not put the relegation of fossil fuels on the agenda. The same is true for many of the Western leaders who are tasking lobbies to row against the tide of these climate agreements.
As if to say that the ecological transition and the energy mix are an industrial transformation which will take time to take place at the crossroads of the divergent interests of the giants of the planet. Who knows why so many absences from leaders with the preponderant political voice at this summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.
It therefore appears very clearly that achieving these challenges requires multilateralism through cooperation between States. But the wars which pollute these relations and reshape global geopolitics are not for a synergy of actions in favor of the climate.
COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, focuses on climate financing. At the opening of the proceedings yesterday, Monday November 11, the United Nations Executive Secretary for Climate, Simon Stiell declared that climate financing is not a “charitable work”; but it is in everyone’s interest.
The other challenge is to make everyone pay the climate bill through what we call “carbon market”States, businesses, individuals and citizens to put their hands in their pockets. A scheme which clearly lacks relevance in the face of major polluters who are reluctant to fight evil.
Clearly, planet Earth remains under the greenhouse effect, as long as the leaders of this world hide behind a frantic race for control of the sinews of war and the proliferation of battlefields with a contagion effect. Tomorrow will be daylight. And working for posterity is obligatory on everyone, for generations to come.
South Daily
