Due to the obstruction by Western countries, the world leaders’ meeting on climate transition and other sustainable development goals (SDGs) at the UN General Assembly ended disappointingly. This adds another set of obstacles to be faced by the UN Conference of the Parties (COP28) to be held in the Dubai emirate in November. As it is known, the SDGs include combating climate change, eradicating hunger and fighting extreme poverty around the world.
Almost everyone at the UNGA meeting, firstly the BRICS members, warned of the dangers that the world will face if these goals are not met by the 2030 deadline. The summit held before the UNGA meeting adopted a declaration on climate transition and the other positive changes agreed upon far back in 2015. It was referred to 17 goals which included, besides reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the issues related to equitable water distribution and living standard inequalities reduction between all countries in the world. The declaration says: “The SDGs achievement is under threat… We are alarmed that most of the SDGs progress either too slowly or has sagged below the 2015 baseline.”
Now the irony is in the fact that these are the same signatory countries, primarily Western states, which either do not do enough to discharge their undersigned commitments or back down from some of their legally binding goals. The most notable are the government policies in developed countries, which are not aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Developed countries, primarily the United States and Europe, are reducing their international aid to the developing world or even bringing it to nought. The commitment to help developing countries finance their electric power industry transformation has not been met, since only a small part of the agreed amount has been provided.
Another, but seemingly not the last, sad news was the statement of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, which drastically weakened the UK’s commitments to combat climate change. This step included the extension of the ban on new gasoline and diesel cars and new natural gas home heating until 2035 instead of 2030. Such a recession could entail the claims of environmental groups to High Courts against the governments for the breach of their legal commitments. By the way, this is what many countries in Europe and the United States do. Well, as for courts, the same people sit there who violate their obligations in the face of developing countries, which are getting poorer and poorer from climate deterioration.
When the United Kingdom hosted COP26 in 2021, its Government boasted and was widely promoted around the world as being a leader in reducing carbon emissions. Some time ago, the Government climate advisers warned that the actual activity pace is “alarmingly slow.” A month after this warning by the independent Climate Change Commission (CCC), the Sunak Government approved more than a hundred permits for drilling oil and gas wells off the Scottish coast. This directly contradicts the promised policy of the fossil fuel to renewable energy/environmentally friendly sources transition. Here are the words and deeds of the vaunted democracy, when, for the sake of the petty interests of companies, the pillars of democracy are trampled on and their once-given promises are violated. If President V. Putin has concluded that the U.S. is an Empire Of Lies, then we can say that Europe is also included in this notorious empire of lies, deceit and broken promises.
The UK Government is not alone in refusing to meet the climate transition targets. The 2015 Paris Agreement, signed by 193 countries, set out limiting the Earth’s temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030. But rich industrialized countries, which account for more than three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions, are not actually reducing emissions fast enough to achieve the Paris Agreement goal. Quite the opposite, they increase the fossil fuel production output and rely on it as a source of energy, as we can see at least in the example of the United Kingdom.
This spring, the drilling was approved by the U.S. Administration in vast areas of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, and similar concessions in the Persian Gulf cover an area as large as Italy. As estimated by biologicaldiversity.org earlier this year, the number of oil and gas drilling permits approved by the Joe Biden Administration is higher than those by the previous Donald Trump Administration for all their term. This completely debunks the slogan promoted by the U.S., which is allegedly a pioneer in combating climate change. The Joe Biden Administration has approved 6,430 permits in the first two years of his presidency, which is more than Trump’s 6,172 drilling permits during his first two years in office.
Other major-economy countries, from Australia and Japan to Germany, are also backing down from their earlier promises to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. The increased use of coal-fired power plants is one of the most important factors, since coal emits much more carbon into the atmosphere than oil and gas. Such harm has dramatically increased by European countries since they, for political reasons, abandoned cheap Russian gas and switched to using coal.
The combating climate change activity slowdown by developed countries poses a serious challenge to COP28, which will be held in Dubai in November. Although Western media are focused on the man who will head the summit and the fact that he is the Director General of an Emirati oil and gas company, the Western countries’ policy is rather upsetting to UN environmentalists and have nothing to do with effective combating to improve the world’s climate. In his Fortune article, the Head of COP28, Sultan Al Jaber, Director General of Abu Dhabi’s ADNOC energy behemoth, stressed the lack of any progress by developed countries in meeting the climate transition goals. He selected the “climate transition finance” issue which prevailed at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh last year. Trying to defuse the tension in the fossil fuel debates, he underlined: “It is time to transform climate finance – and bridge its $2.4 trillion gap.” By the way, it is predominately Western countries who created the gap, justifying themselves with the economic and financial difficulties, while allocating hundreds of billions of dollars to finance the war of Ukrainian neo-Nazis against Russia.
The Loss Compensation Fund, established at a conference in Egypt, is intended, along with the financing of the electric power industry transformation in the developed world, to deliver assistance to the most vulnerable countries in their responding to climate change-related crises. Its cost is almost two and a half trillion dollars, but the yearly liabilities of rich countries so far amount to one hundred billion dollars until 2030. But even this part of the total amount is not yet guaranteed and, as judged from the statements of Western leaders, would never be allocated.
Quite rightly, Sultan Al-Jaber wrote: “Is the world capable of mobilizing the trillions of dollars necessary to fund the climate transition? I believe the answer is yes – but not without a concerted effort from governments, international financial institutions, and the private sector to reform the current financial architecture and better align global and domestic financial flows with the world’s climate goals”. So, are Western countries, whose main goal is to make a profit for themselves, ready to do this? There is only one answer: Westerners are unlikely to do this, since it is easier and more profitable for them to unleash wars, create tension all over the world’s regions and overpricely supply their obsolete lethal weapons there.
Many are now asking whether Southern countries will succeed at the upcoming COP28 while Westerners are subverting the positive solutions regarding the world’s climate improvement and ever-worsening emissions problem? Besides, more and more countries are waiving from the 2030 emission reduction targets set forth in the Paris Agreement. Only the leaders of a few nations, such as the BRICS countries, are interested and will actively combat to improve the global climate conditions.
Viktor Mikhin, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.