Even the star-studded presence of Greta Thunberg and Harrison Ford couldn’t save the U.N.Climate Change Conference.
The annual climate fest was widely panned as a failure after wrapping up Sunday with no agreement on hot-button issues such as the Green Climate Fund, an international carbon market, “common metrics” for measuring non-CO2 emissions, and reimbursement to poorer nations for “loss and damage caused by man-made climate change.”
“I am disappointed with the results of #COP25,” tweeted U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, referring to the conference’s official name, the 25th Conference of the Parties.
After two weeks, delegates from about 200 countries could only agree that there is an “urgent need” to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement, despite pressure from activists who swarmed the Madrid gathering.
“The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation & finance to tackle the climate crisis,” Mr. Guterres said. “But we must not give up, and I will not give up.”
Those tricky issues will be pushed next year to COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, but skeptics said there’s no reason to believe developed nations will adhere to a pledge to sink $100 billion into a fund to help developing countries adapt to climate change.
“The failure of COP25 to agree [on] the thorny issue of climate finance doesn’t come as a surprise. In fact, we have been predicting this decade-old stalemate to continue,” said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Forum in London, calling it “highly unlikely that the $100-billion deadlock can be overcome.”
In a tweet, Cuban diplomat Bruno Rodriguez blamed a “lack of political will of industrialized countries. They try to put the burden on developing countries. Capitalism is unsustainable. Human species is faced with the risk of extinction.”
I am disappointed with the results of #COP25.
The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation & finance to tackle the climate crisis.
But we must not give up, and I will not give up.
— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) December 15, 2019
Meanwhile, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a supporter of President Trump, took a dig at the international community for its criticism over annual fires in the Amazon.
“I’d like to know: has there been a resolution for Europe to be reforested, or are they just going to keep bothering Brazil?” he asked, as reported by the BBC.
Not surprisingly, the Trump administration was blamed in part for the conference’s failure after the U.S. delegation was accused of blocking language on liability for climate “loss and damage.” The U.S. is also scheduled to exit the Paris agreement in 11 months.
“If the United States is not backing an agreement that is meaningful it is extraordinarily difficult for the rest of the world to come to an agreement,” said Sir David King, a British representative.
“And I’m afraid as long as we have President Trump in the United States with President Bolsonaro in Brazil it is extraordinarily difficult to get all of those countries to agree.”
An utter failure.#COP25 & conferences like it are intended to be actual negotiations to urgently drawdown global carbon emissions – not cocktail parties to make politicians feel better about themselves as they squash dissent & sell off our futures to fossil fuel interests. https://t.co/cw1B1dtS53
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 14, 2019
The conference, which began Dec. 2, notched a few smaller victories, including adopting a five-year “gender action plan,” which seeks to “advance knowledge and understanding of gender-responsive climate action.”
The European Union also announced the adoption of the European Green Deal, which seeks net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, despite an opt-out from Poland, which said it plans to reach “climate neutrality at its own pace.”
Greta, a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, tweeted that it “seems like #cop25 in Madrid is falling apart right now. The science is clear, but the science is being ignored. Whatever happens, we will never give up. We have only just begun.”
Read more at Washington Times
Just think of all that fossil fuel use their wasted times and efforts for nothing, as the title of Freddy Fender song WASTED DAYS AND WASTED NIGHTS
Personally, I’d LOVE to see the actual SCIENCE not being ignored. Greta and the environmental activists “crew’ are completely off the mark. There is PLENTY of data to show that IPCC predictions, ongoing modeling anomalies and observed surface temperatures indicate that the modest warming of the past 150 years DOES NOT constitute a CLIMATE EMERGENCY! This continued effort to VILIFY fossil fuels is misguided and provides no CONSTRUCTIVE solutions to the REAL challenge in the decades ahead: Energy TRANSITION & attendant environmental protection. If you want the RIGHT answers, then you need to start asking the right questions…
The number of stupid people that believe that CO2 is a pollutant is mind boggling.
And, also belief in AGW.
Of course the leaders do not care about the science, only world socialism and bringing down of Capitalism.
The real emergency for the chicken little crowd is they aren’t stealing enough of our money,
plain and simple!
I keep saying that history repeats itself. This is true of the COP conferences including the years that think they made good progress. One sure repeater is that the United States is blamed for blocking progress on climate finance but the European Union is doing just a much to obscure action. I wonder who they will blame next year when the US is no longer in it. Difficult issues continue to get pushed to the next meeting. Trying to get nations to commit to fewer emissions also gets pushed to the next meeting.
Obama was behind the promise of giving the developing nations $100 billion a year. In exchange for this promise he got their cooperation. The money was supposed to ramp up to $100 billion and be at that amount by 2020. This promise was very poorly planned with no idea of where it would come from. One thing I will say for the developing countries is they came up with a plan to provide the money. Their proposal was a world wide tax on carbon dioxide emissions and a tax on financial transactions. Even if the negotiators would agree, there is no way that the legislatures back home would implement these taxes.
Governments have to be brought to heel and reminded that they collect our money to spend on projects important to ordinary people not chasing shadows. As for reparations surely none are due as we are being asked to take action to avoid problems – if we’re now being told the “crisis” has already occurred I for one am perfectly content with the planet as is. Of course we could get rid of all the politicians and bureaucrats whose work is done!