‘We are in a fantasy land here’
United Nations climate negotiations were deadlocked and heading deep into overtime yesterday with even the best-case outcome likely to fall well short of what science says is needed to avert a future ravaged by global warming.
The COP25 summit in Madrid arrives on the heels of climate-related disasters across the planet, including unprecedented cyclones, deadly droughts and record-setting heatwaves.
As pressure inside and outside the talks mounts, old splits between rich polluters and developing nations have re-emerged over who should slash greenhouse gas emissions by how much, and how to pay the trillions needed to live in a climate-addled world.
Newer fissures, meanwhile, between poor, climate-vulnerable nations and emerging giants such as China and India -- the world’s No.1 and No.4 emitters -- are further stymying progress. The nations accused these big countries of lacking ambition and hurting the cause of others and the Earth.
The narrow aim of the Madrid negotiations is to finalise the rulebook for the 2015 Paris climate accord, which enjoins nations to limit global temperature rises to “well below” two degrees Celsius. But “raising ambition” on emissions remains the overarching goal in Madrid and especially next year, when Glasgow will host the last climate summit before the Paris treaty becomes operational.
The draft Madrid agreement under negotiation, which must be approved by consensus, lays out two options.
The first -- favoured by nations reluctant to enhance their targets in the short term, including the US, India, China and Saudi Arabia -- simply repeats language in the 2015 treaty.
Another potential deal-breaker is so-called “loss and damage” -- how countries already counting the cost of the climate emergency can be compensated.
The US, which is leaving the Paris agreement, has aggressively blocked any provisions that might leave them and other developed countries on the hook for damages that could total more than $150 billion per year by 2025, observers have said.
“It’s basically like what’s happening in the real world and in the streets, the protesters, doesn’t exist,” said Alden Meyer, policy and strategy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “We are in a fantasy land here.”
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