After the very collapse of what is famously called the five Ds of climate change i.e. denialism, deflection, disinformation, delayism and doomism, the climate conventions started taking place led by the United Nations as the Conference of Parties (COP). With the beginning summit in Berlin, Germany in 1995, there has 26 summits of COP been done and 27th on the way in Egypt with no fruit in hand so far.
Which Conference of Parties (COP) will be the conference of action against catastrophic climate change? Will the ongoing summit of COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh merely be a summit like the previous ones or will it pave the way to turn the steering wheel of world vehicle going towards climate hell? After the disappointing results of the English COP, will the ongoing African COP be the conference of action and implementation? Can a family comprising eight billion members will make themselves able to escape the climate cataclysm?
The conference attendance was an epic scale with 100 heads of state and other 45,000 delegates, individuals provided the opportunity to address the conference, and vowed to step in every possible move to stop the Earth’s temperature to 1.5°C. again, hallow and with implementation-impossibility. For covering the failure of the previous English conference in Glasgow, the rhetorical pledges are outweighing. After all, to finance the climate procedures, previously pledged 100 billion dollars are not tabled yet.
Can a family comprising eight billion members will make themselves able to escape the climate cataclysm?
With the opening ceremony of COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh city of Egypt, United Nations incumbent general secretary Antonio Guettress stated that “we are in the fight of our life and we are losing, greenhouse gases emissions are keep growing, global temperature is keep rising and our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate catastrophe irreversible. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”
By any means, the state heads participated in the conference to strengthen the action implementation. For example, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy briefly talked via a video link at the conference. Though he focused less on climate change, he bombarded the criticism on one country. He stated, “There can be no effective climate policy without peace. The Russian war has brought about an energy crisis that has forced dozens of countries to resume coal-fired power generation to lower energy prices for their people, to lower prices that are shockingly rising due to deliberate Russian actions.”
The agendas mentioned in the conference could bring change in the climatic atmosphere positively. That includes coping with the decarbonisation challenge; accelerating the way towards decarbonising the steel industry; starting the journey of the oil and gas industry’s decarbonisation from commitment to action; ensuring ICESCO initiatives implementation; advancing global methane pledges; supporting low carbon development pathways for Africa and the developing world; starting bolstered campaigns to influence climate change through social media panels; accelerating mitigation of anti-environmental initiatives while ensuring energy security and advancing action adaptation of conference pledges in Africa and the rest as well.
For the centre issue of the century, almost all the countries on the planet endeavour in accordance with her capacity. It is the very game of cooperation since unity is strength. With a rocket pace, the contamination of air, oceans, seas and rivers is occurring sans any resistance in sight. The economies of almost all states depend on the nature destruction of resources like fossil fuels, and wood production, which causes deforestation and others.
The G7 countries, Russia, China and India are among the top polluters with no alternative to alter the energy resources. As a result, the climate crisis looms large at a rapid pace. As long as no initiatives for clean energy are made, the world should be prepared for climate Armageddon. After the fifth wave of extinction, the K-T Mass Extinction, further world negligence in coping with the climate crisis may lead to the sixth and perhaps the last extinction of life. Comprehensive cooperation can make the world escape this predicament or perish otherwise.
Viewing the scenes of devastation caused by climate change this summer with perished thousands of lives and submerged two-thirds of the country, displacing millions and washing away the country’s infrastructure, prime minister Shahbaz Shareef at the stage of COP27 conference stated that “the damage and loss have exceeded 30 billion dollars and this all happened despite our very low carbon footprints and yet we became the victim of something with which we had nothing to do, and of course, it was a man-made disaster.” In other words, he condemned the world’s silence over climate justice despite its disastrous repercussions Pakistan faced sans compensation as much as she needed to recover.
The circumstances brought by climate change indicate the world to act now for a safer future ahead. It is time to translate words into actions to make climate change repercussions lesser and bearable. It must be a summit of action and implementation by pushing the global order run by clean energy and sustainable development.
The writer is a freelancer based in Kandhkot, Sindh