The new world climate summit has again been blocked by rich oilmen, the biggest polluters of the planet and the ones most responsible for the very real danger that we will enter the era of global warming into a period of global boiling
If an asteroid were approaching, it would occupy everyone's attention. If an alien invasion threatened, people would unite. While experts warn that global warming brings changes that will be difficult, if not impossible to stop, while pessimists claim that doomsday is approaching, the world responds to such an existential threat - conferences.
"Blah, blah, blah", once commented the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg COP26, UN summit on climate change held in Glasgow. Since then, the leaders of more than 190 countries of the world have met in Sharm el-Sheikh, Dubai, Baku, and now in Belem, Brazil, but the result is more or less the same. Blah, blah, blah.
WE ARE DIGGING OUR OWN GRAVE
It was another in a series of collisions between those who would dig as deep as possible in search of oil, gas and coal while infinitely expanding the limits of agricultural production, destroying the eco-system and ignoring the disastrous effects on land, forests, rivers and oceans, on the one hand, and those who listen to scientists and their warnings - that all this already has catastrophic effects on nature, climate and human health and that we are entering a period of global boiling from the era of global warming.
Climate change is a dangerous game in which man got involved against nature, which, irritated, started to fight back. Heat, drought, rain and floods have already become serial killers. Global conflagrations unprecedented in the recent history of mankind were ignited. By burning fossil fuels, the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere is constantly rising. The last decade is the warmest since measurements have been taken. "Heat stress" will be one of the biggest executors of this era. Scientists warn that extreme heat waves, which used to occur once a decade, will occur every two to three years. The probability of such disasters in Europe increased nine times. Deserts are encroaching and forests are disappearing.
"This is the way the world is disappearing. Not with a big bang - a sudden, universal catastrophe - but a series of smaller, more local catastrophes that become larger and more widespread," writes respected commentator Paul Krugman in the "New York Times".
About a million animal and plant species are facing extinction. Dozens and hundreds have already disappeared during our lifetimes without us even noticing. Ocean and sea temperatures have broken all records since they were measured 60 years ago. In July 2024, the Adriatic record was measured in Dubrovnik - 29,7 degrees. Every other sea turtle cannot survive because it swallows plastic. In Italy, three tons of fish reveal a ton of plastic. Half of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest, is already dead. The corals are ghostly white.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warns of a future of constant and ubiquitous chaos of unimaginable proportions. "We're digging our own grave. It's time to say enough is enough! Our fragile planet is hanging by a thread."
THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN NATURE AND MAN
However, a common diagnosis is proving easier to come by than a cure to keep warming below 1,5 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial era, as stipulated in the Paris Agreement of 2015. Scientists say this alarming limit will be breached in the early 2030s, and that means more frequent storms, droughts, wildfires and floods. Science has set a deadline, but the half-hearted results suggest that a serious fight is yet to come.
Climate change knows no borders. They are moving from poor Africa, whose forests have been cruelly exploited by the developed, and are tearing down all the walls of "fortress Europe". There is no more "normal" that we are used to. No one is spared: neither the rich world - which is the most responsible as it produces as much as 80 percent of harmful gas emissions - nor the poor countries that have been asking for help for years in vain.
A struggle is underway that will mark this time and the future: the struggle between Mother Nature and the nature of man who has indulged in self-confident arrogance, insufficiently prepared to repair the damage and change his behavior. All said, all the numbers are there, all the tools are known.
NICE, BUT NOT ENOUGH
Despite the "green hypocrisy", all is not lost if the knowledge we possess is applied. That's why scientists say that ecological disaster is not inevitable if the world acts in solidarity, rapidly transforms the global economy and abandons fossil fuels. The dark future is not yet written, provided the planet resets.
There are results. Renewable energy sources exceeded coal this year, and investments in clean energy reached 2.000 billion dollars, twice as much as in fossil fuels, reports the International Energy Agency. More than half of China's electricity generation capacity is now low-carbon, and half of new cars are electric. India achieved its renewable energy targets five years ahead of schedule. Solar panels have become the largest source of energy in Pakistan this year. South Korea, the seventh largest coal producer, has committed to ending production by 2040.
Nice, but not enough because the trajectories of emissions of harmful gases are not changing more significantly, which will make global food production fall by a third of the current level in 2100. What can be done so that the whirlwind of destruction started by man does not eventually take humanity away? How to reduce the production of fossil fuels, the consumption of which heats the earth's atmosphere and leads to the emission of harmful gases?
A COSTLY DISSOLUTION
When Brazil was designated as the host of the summit, President Luiz Iñacio Lula da Silva chose Belem, a city on the Amazon delta and its jungles, the "lungs of the world" as it is called, the vast expanse of tropical forests that have been disappearing at a dangerously fast pace in recent decades. He also wanted to send a message that multilateralism lives on: only with collective action is it possible to prevent the impending ecological disaster.
Many are not interested in this message of goodwill and collective consciousness. US President Donald Trump is making deals with favored nations while threatening tariffs on others. In this mandate, he again withdrew the USA from the Paris climate agreement. There was no American delegation in Belem.
China, the world's second largest polluter after the US, was present and tried to help Brazil, its BRICS partner, to make the Summit a success, but Beijing made it clear that it had no intention of financially compensating for America's absence, which did not interfere in the work of the meeting. Which is not to say that there wasn't someone to make Trump's support of oilmen and coal miners: Saudi Arabia.
A road map should be drawn up in order to phase out fossil fuels. A large group of about eighty countries was "for". The European Union likes to brag about its Green Agenda and presents itself as a leader in climate action, but many criticize it for failing to deliver on promises to help developing countries. Europeans counter that they have to increase their military budgets because of growing threats from Russia and the war in Ukraine. The EU was without a common position for a while, but later joined. China has indicated that it will not be opposed, as has India.
Then the Saudis and Russia took over. The oilmen persistently deny the harm of their products, while the oil and gas industries on a global level make a daily profit of three billion dollars. The powerful oil lobby, whose delegations are the most numerous at such gatherings, managed to block a joint document that would agree on the conclusions of scientists: the burning of fossil fuels is warming our planet to increasingly dangerous levels.
At the COP28 summit in the Emirates, all the participants agreed on the "transition from fossil fuels", but right after that the process of undermining that commitment was started, so already at the next summit in another oil exporting country, Azerbaijan, that wording was omitted.
In Belem, after dramatic all-night talks, a day later than expected, the oil workers managed not to mention the demand that "transition from fossil fuels" is necessary. The formulation of "transition" was rejected, so instead of an explicit mention of fossil fuels, the reference "consensus from the Emirates" was accepted as a compromise. Each of the 194 participants was left to interpret the agreement as they saw fit. The obligation to include "critical minerals" in the agreement - needed for components of renewable energy, but whose extraction is hampered by human rights violations - was exempted at the request of China and Russia.
Small success, as optimists call the Belem summit, or failure, as realists claim, is the true picture of the world. "These meetings are based on consensus, and in times of geopolitical divisions, consensus is increasingly difficult to achieve," says Guterres. "I can't pretend that COP30 has delivered everything that is necessary. The gap between where we are and what science is asking for is dangerously wide."
"IT'S NICE TO LIVE ON THIS PLANET"
There is much promise that the developed world, which is the biggest polluter, will help the countries of Africa and Latin America, where most of the existing biodiversity is found. Protecting the human environment requires large investments for the recovery and conservation of nature. Developed countries are pledging $120 billion a year by 2035 to help the poor cope with extreme weather. Developing countries estimate that 300 billion is necessary, but their request to shorten the deadline to 2030 was rejected. The funds are there, but the question is whether they will be replenished. The powerful and the rich shared promises, while representatives of small Pacific island states desperately repeated that they would be submerged by rising sea and ocean levels.
Nothing like the big step forward demanded by experts warning that the world is approaching a tipping point that could destroy ecosystems and throw entire parts of the world into chaos. "I dreamed of a bigger result", said Brazilian Minister of Human Environment Marina Silva disappointedly.
The Paris Agreement somehow survived, but the Belém result is nowhere near enough to limit global warming to 1,5 degrees Celsius. Aid mechanisms for the countries most affected by extreme climate conditions do not seem promising. The importance of forest protection was barely mentioned despite the fact that the summit was held in the Amazon. The world balance of power is still in favor of oil, gas and coal, so fossil fuels are not even mentioned.
Despite everything, Belém still opened some new avenues by negotiating how to reduce dependence on petrochemicals, how to formulate policies for a fairer transition to a clean energy future, and how to open the pockets of rich nations. The problem is that big ideas require months, if not years, of careful preparation, developing concepts, gathering allies, removing obstacles. The summit in Belem only opened the way to the Road Map for the elimination of fossil fuels.
Nature does not wait. Heat waves set records year after year, floods, storms and droughts take on ever more dramatic forms, but the world largely acts as if nothing is happening. While Mother Nature reacts cruelly to the arrogant behavior of the man who is the only one to blame for the disaster in the announcement, the climate talks are ignored. None of the four major US TV networks had a reporter from Belém. European broadcasters complained that the contributions they send hardly ever get space. The local media are no exception. "Vreme" at least to some extent corrects this unwillingness to face the reality of the world in which we live.
The summit in Brazil achieved some important victories, the world moved from the dilemma of what to do to the degree of how to do it, but it failed to confront the most important issue of fossil fuels, as many expected. The energy transition is underway, just like the warming of the planet. Is the world marching towards a catastrophe that will overtake it before it can come to an agreement? It would be better, before it is too late, to remember the words of the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda: "It is nice to live on this planet."
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