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Monday, February 17, 2025

Treaty against fossil fuels floated at UN climate summit

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832 days ago
20221108
Kausea Natano, prime minister of Tuvalu, speaks at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Kausea Natano, prime minister of Tuvalu, speaks at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

The world should con­front cli­mate change the way it does nu­clear weapons, by agree­ing to a non-pro­lif­er­a­tion treaty that stops fur­ther pro­duc­tion of fos­sil fu­els, a small is­land na­tion leader said Tues­day.

The pro­pos­al by Tu­valu came as vul­ner­a­ble na­tions pushed for more ac­tion and mon­ey at in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate talks in Egypt, while big pol­luters re­mained di­vid­ed over who should pay for the dam­age in­dus­tri­al green­house gas emis­sions have done to the plan­et.

“We all know that the lead­ing cause of cli­mate cri­sis is fos­sil fu­els,” Tu­valu Prime Min­is­ter Kausea Natano told his fel­low lead­ers.

The Pa­cif­ic coun­try has “joined Van­u­atu and oth­er na­tions call­ing for a fos­sil fu­els non-pro­lif­er­a­tion treaty,” Natano said. “It’s get­ting too hot and there is very (lit­tle) time to slow and re­verse the in­creas­ing tem­per­a­ture. There­fore, it is es­sen­tial to pri­or­i­tize fast-act­ing strate­gies.”

Van­u­atu and Tu­valu, along with oth­er vul­ner­a­ble na­tions, have been flex­ing their moral au­thor­i­ty in ne­go­ti­a­tions, against the back­drop of re­cent cli­mate-re­lat­ed dis­as­ters. The idea of a non-pro­lif­er­a­tion treaty for coal, oil and nat­ur­al gas has pre­vi­ous­ly been ad­vanced by cam­paign­ers, re­li­gious au­thor­i­ties in­clud­ing the Vat­i­can, and some sci­en­tists, but Natano’s speech gave it a big­ger boost in front of a glob­al au­di­ence.

A year ago at cli­mate talks in Glas­gow, a pro­pos­al to call for a “phase out” of coal — the dirt­i­est of the fos­sil fu­els — was changed at the last minute to “phase down” by a de­mand from In­dia, earn­ing the wrath of small is­land na­tions and some vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries.

Since then the glob­al en­er­gy crunch trig­gered by the Russ­ian in­va­sion of Ukraine has prompt­ed a scram­ble by some coun­tries and com­pa­nies seek­ing to tap fresh sources of gas and oil.

Push­ing back against that, vul­ner­a­ble na­tions al­so called for a glob­al tax on the prof­its of fos­sil fu­el cor­po­ra­tions that are mak­ing bil­lions of dol­lars dai­ly from sky-high en­er­gy prices.

“It is about time that these com­pa­nies are made to pay a glob­al car­bon tax on their prof­its as a source of fund­ing for loss and dam­age,” said Gas­ton Browne, prime min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. “Prof­li­gate pro­duc­ers of fos­sil fu­els have ben­e­fit­ed from ex­tor­tion­ate prof­its at the ex­pense of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion.”

The idea of a wind­fall tax on car­bon prof­its has gained trac­tion in re­cent months amid sky-high earn­ings for oil and gas cor­po­ra­tions even as con­sumers strug­gle to pay the cost of heat­ing their homes and fill­ing their cars. For the first time, del­e­gates at this year’s U.N. cli­mate con­fer­ence are to dis­cuss de­mands by de­vel­op­ing na­tions that the rich­est, most pol­lut­ing coun­tries pay com­pen­sa­tion for dam­age wreaked on them by cli­mate change, which in cli­mate ne­go­ti­a­tions is called “loss and dam­age.”

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley said fos­sil fu­el com­pa­nies should con­tribute to those funds, which would pro­vide vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries with fi­nan­cial aid for the cli­mate-re­lat­ed loss­es they are suf­fer­ing.

Oth­er lead­ers re­ject­ed the idea.

“I think this is not the place now to de­vel­op tax rules, but rather to joint­ly de­vel­op mea­sures to pro­tect against the con­se­quences of cli­mate change,” Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz told re­porters.

If the small is­lands can’t get a glob­al tax on fos­sil fu­el prof­its, An­tigua’s Browne sug­gest­ed go­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al courts to get pol­luters to pay for what they’ve done. Sci­en­tists from Dart­mouth Col­lege cal­cu­lat­ed spe­cif­ic dam­ages for all the world’s coun­tries and how much was caused by oth­er na­tions, say­ing it would work well in in­ter­na­tion­al court cas­es.

Browne quot­ed William Shake­speare’s “Mac­beth” in shar­ing his frus­tra­tion with lack of ac­tion.

“To­mor­row and to­mor­row and to­mor­row creeps in this pet­ty pace from day to day to the last syl­la­ble of record­ed time. And all our yes­ter­days have light­ed fools the way to dusty death,” Browne said.

De­spite 27 cli­mate sum­mits “to­mor­row has not come,” he said.

Speak­ing for a coun­try that has suf­fered from the con­se­quences of cli­mate change re­cent­ly, So­ma­lia’s pres­i­dent said it faces “one of the worst droughts in mod­ern his­to­ry.”

Pres­i­dent Has­san Sheikh Mo­hamud said more than 7 mil­lion So­ma­lis, or about half the pop­u­la­tion, can­not meet their ba­sic food needs as the Horn of Africa re­gion has seen two years of failed rains.

“We are try­ing des­per­ate­ly to re­spond,” he said. The drought has killed thou­sands of peo­ple, many of them chil­dren. It is al­so re­shap­ing So­ma­lia’s land­scape as the coun­try strug­gles with one of the world’s fastest ur­ban­iza­tion rates as many peo­ple flee parched ar­eas.

Pak­istani Prime Min­is­ter Shah­baz Sharif told fel­low lead­ers how his coun­try was struck by cat­a­stroph­ic floods in re­cent months that af­fect­ed 33 mil­lion peo­ple and caused more than $30 bil­lion in eco­nom­ic dam­age.

“This all hap­pened de­spite our very low car­bon foot­prints,” Sharif said, in­sist­ing: “Of course it was a man­made dis­as­ter.”

Sharif called for ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial sup­port for his coun­try and oth­ers suf­fer­ing from the ef­fects of cli­mate change, say­ing mon­ey to help Pak­istan re­build af­ter the floods should be on top of oth­er aid and not come in the form of loans. Fur­ther debts, he said “would be a fi­nan­cial death trap.”

The pres­i­dent of Malawi, mean­while, praised those lead­ers present in Egypt for sim­ply show­ing up.

“The temp­ta­tion to ab­stain from COP this year was great,” Pres­i­dent Lazarus Chak­w­era said, re­fer­ring to the talks by their U.N. acronym, “be­cause of the great and un­prece­dent­ed eco­nom­ic hard­ships your cit­i­zens are suf­fer­ing in your own na­tion.”

“But you re­sist­ed this temp­ta­tion and chose the path of courage,” he said.

Chak­w­erea said any agree­ments forged at the two-week meet­ing should rec­og­nize the dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties of coun­tries such as the Unit­ed States and Chi­na, and de­vel­op­ing na­tions like his own.

So far, Chi­na has in­sist­ed that it can­not be held to the same stan­dards as de­vel­oped economies like the Unit­ed States or Eu­rope be­cause it is still lift­ing mil­lions of its cit­i­zens out of pover­ty. But there is grow­ing pres­sure on Bei­jing to step up its cli­mate ef­forts giv­en its mas­sive eco­nom­ic clout.

Jochen Flas­barth, a se­nior Ger­man of­fi­cial and cli­mate ne­go­tia­tor, said Chi­na on­ly for­mal­ly meets the cri­te­ria of a de­vel­op­ing coun­try.

“In truth it is the top emit­ter world­wide and it is al­so an ex­treme­ly pros­per­ous econ­o­my,” he said. “That’s why we ex­pect ... that more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is tak­en on (by Chi­na), na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.”

The U.S. mid-term elec­tions were hang­ing over the talks Tues­day, with many en­vi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers wor­ried that de­feat for the De­moc­rats could make it hard­er for Pres­i­dent Joe Biden to pur­sue his am­bi­tious cli­mate agen­da.

Al­so hang­ing over the con­fer­ence was the fate of one of Egypt’s most promi­nent jailed pro-democ­ra­cy ac­tivists, Alaa Ab­del-Fat­tah, who has been im­pris­oned for most of the past decade. He stopped even drink­ing wa­ter on Sun­day, the first day of the con­fer­ence, vow­ing he is will­ing to die if not re­leased, his fam­i­ly said.

Nu­mer­ous world lead­ers raised his case in meet­ings with Egypt’s Pres­i­dent Ab­del Fat­tah el-Sis­si and the head of the U.N. hu­man rights of­fice called for his im­me­di­ate re­lease.

Egypt’s long-time his­to­ry of sup­press­ing dis­sent has raised con­tro­ver­sy over its host­ing of the an­nu­al con­fer­ence, with many in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate ac­tivists com­plain­ing that re­stric­tions by the host are qui­et­ing civ­il so­ci­ety. —SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP)

___

Sto­ry by FRANK JOR­DANS and WA­JO­HI KABUKU­RU | The As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Seth Boren­stein and Samy Magdy con­tributed to this re­port.

EnvironmentUnited NationsClimate ChangeCOP27


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