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Sunday, May 25, 2025

Vulnerable nations face existential threat from warming

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737 days ago
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FILE - Steam rises from the coal-fired power plant Neurath near Grevenbroich, Germany, Wednesday, November 2, 2022. Oil and gas producers talk up technological breakthroughs they say soon will allow the world to drill and burn fossil fuels without worsening global warming. US climate envoy John Kerry says the time is here for the industry to prove it can make the technology happen at scale, affordably and quickly to stave off climate disaster.

FILE - Steam rises from the coal-fired power plant Neurath near Grevenbroich, Germany, Wednesday, November 2, 2022. Oil and gas producers talk up technological breakthroughs they say soon will allow the world to drill and burn fossil fuels without worsening global warming. US climate envoy John Kerry says the time is here for the industry to prove it can make the technology happen at scale, affordably and quickly to stave off climate disaster.

Michael Probst

John Ker­ry, for­mer US Sec­re­tary of State and cur­rent US Spe­cial En­voy on Cli­mate Change mat­ters, told the world’s Am­bas­sadors at a meet­ing in Wash­ing­ton, on May 10, that “there is no way” of keep­ing the rise in glob­al tem­per­a­tures to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius un­less CO2 emis­sions are dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced.

Over the last two years, Ker­ry has tra­versed the globe as US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s point man in a mas­sive push to stop tip­ping the world over the edge of a Cli­mate Change dis­as­ter.

The state­ment he made to Am­bas­sadors ac­cred­it­ed to the US gov­ern­ment was not news, but it was sober­ing to hear it so ex­plic­it­ly told by an in­flu­en­tial fig­ure in glob­al cli­mate ne­go­ti­a­tions.

It was es­pe­cial­ly so for Am­bas­sadors of 36 small states and 48 coun­tries in sub-Sa­ha­ran Africa, which ac­count for less than 2 per cent and 0.55 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly of CO2 emis­sions, but which would be dev­as­tat­ed if the tar­get of 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius is ex­ceed­ed.

Speak­ing for small is­land states, in re­sponse to the se­ri­ous ob­ser­va­tion by Ker­ry, I em­pha­sised that at 2 de­grees Cel­sius, many coun­tries would be se­vere­ly erod­ed, and any greater warm­ing would drown many is­lands in the Caribbean and the Pa­cif­ic. I al­so point­ed out that, even if all these coun­tries re­duced their al­ready low CO2 emis­sions, it would have lit­tle or no ef­fect on the rate or in­ten­si­ty of glob­al warm­ing.

Ker­ry was well aware of this sit­u­a­tion. He of­fered ideas on aims that must be pur­sued in Dubai in De­cem­ber when rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the world’s gov­ern­ments gath­er at the 2023 Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence or Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties, more com­mon­ly re­ferred to as COP28. Among the goals, he list­ed was a greater ef­fort by the 20 na­tions that emit 76 per cent of warm­ing gas­es in­to the at­mos­phere.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that ten of these na­tions are de­vel­oped coun­tries, he said that many of them, such as the US, Ger­many, and the UK, are im­ple­ment­ing strate­gies to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce their emis­sions. But there are ten oth­er na­tions with large economies, like Chi­na, Rus­sia, Brazil, and In­dia, which are not re­duc­ing emis­sions fast enough to achieve the tar­get of 45 per cent re­duc­tion in glob­al emis­sions by 2030. On the cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry, in 2030, the world will reach 3 de­grees Cel­sius above pre-in­dus­tri­al lev­els. That is a mere sev­en years away.

There is no ques­tion that both Chi­na and In­dia have re­cent­ly an­nounced long-term emis­sions re­duc­tion strate­gies. But Chi­na’s share of glob­al emis­sions was near­ly 31 per cent in 2020, and it has set 2060 to reach car­bon neu­tral­i­ty. How­ev­er, that might be too late for many small is­land states as ex­plained ear­li­er. A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion ex­ists with In­dia whose gov­ern­ment has pledged to reach net-ze­ro emis­sions by 2070.

While the com­mit­ments by these two coun­tries are wel­come news, they should un­der­stand why de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, which are dev­as­tat­ing­ly af­fect­ed by CO2 emis­sions would like to see faster re­duc­tions. Their sur­vival de­pends on it; this is not a mat­ter of ide­o­log­i­cal al­liances or North-South dif­fer­ences. Rus­sia, too, has to as­sume a big­ger role in cut­ting emis­sions. Hope­ful­ly, the cur­rent war with Ukraine will not in­flu­ence this wider glob­al con­cern.

The cur­rent strong po­si­tion by the present Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion, on vig­or­ous­ly tack­ling Cli­mate Change, was not shared by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion of Don­ald Trump, who has now de­clared him­self as the Re­pub­li­can Par­ty’s can­di­date for the US Pres­i­den­cy in 2024. There­fore, there is un­der­stand­able con­cern that, if Trump wins the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, not on­ly would he re­vert to dis­miss­ing Cli­mate Change as a myth, but he might al­so re­sume his po­si­tion of with­draw­ing from the COP, and halt­ing the cur­rent US thrust to re­duce its own emis­sions and to se­cure fund­ing for glob­al cli­mate mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion.

Ker­ry ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has won too many al­lies for the cause of fight­ing Cli­mate Change, among big US cor­po­ra­tions with a glob­al reach, for it to be re­versed. Talk­ing at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty on the same day that he ad­dressed Am­bas­sadors, Ker­ry said, “giv­en the de­ci­sions made by Ford Mo­tor Co, Gen­er­al Mo­tors—by big cor­po­ra­tions Google, Ap­ple, Sales Force, FedEx—these com­pa­nies are signed up, they’re on board”. And he added, “I don’t think any one pres­i­dent can pos­si­bly come in now, from what­ev­er wing of what­ev­er par­ty — there’s no way we’re go­ing back­ward. The glob­al econ­o­my has made this de­ci­sion and it’s more pow­er­ful than any politi­cian.”

Vic­tim states of cli­mate change have to hope that he’s right in his as­sess­ment. The re­ver­sal in the US po­si­tion would trig­ger a sim­i­lar re­ver­sal by oth­er in­dus­tri­alised na­tions in their com­pe­ti­tion for larg­er shares of the glob­al mar­ket for their goods. All this would have fright­en­ing con­se­quences giv­en the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing the tar­get of glob­al warm­ing at no more than 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius.

Look­ing to COP28 in sev­en months’ time, Ker­ry named four pri­or­i­ties for gov­ern­ments: map­ping the road ahead in a gen­uine agree­ment; de­cid­ing on adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures to be tak­en by all; ful­fill­ing pledges to de­liv­er the fi­nanc­ing, in­clud­ing iden­ti­fy­ing the sources of fi­nanc­ing; and deal­ing with the call by vic­tim states for com­pen­sa­tion for loss and dam­age.

The US gov­ern­ment al­so has ob­sta­cles to over­come in its own leg­is­la­ture. The US Con­gress has as many cli­mate change doubters as it has ad­vo­cates, and the fos­sil fu­el lob­bies are hard at work to re­sist the diminu­tion of the coal and oil in­dus­tries—some­thing about which Ker­ry is re­al­is­tic. He ex­plains that “no one wants the economies of the world to crash, which is what could hap­pen if you be­gan to dri­ve the price of oil and gas up too much and dri­ve the sup­ply down to too lit­tle”.

In all this, vic­tim coun­tries of cli­mate change have to ad­vance their own in­ter­ests by strong­ly join­ing the ad­vo­ca­cy to the 20 worst CO2 emit­ters to recog­nise that they will pay the high­est price for the in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of oth­ers —se­vere up­heaval in their lives and liveli­hoods, if not ex­tinc­tion. (CMC)


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