The Glasgow climate change conference (COP26) will prolong its negotiations on Saturday, the British presidency reported, after a day of intense debates around conflictive points such as financing.
Delegates from 194 countries were preparing to spend a long night of technical consultations, at a decisive moment in the fight against global warming.
The COP26 It is the appointment that the historic Paris Agreement of six years ago should develop, raising the level of ambition, imposing more cuts in the emission of greenhouse gases, planning a radical change in the energy model, and, a thorny point, setting the modalities financial aid and compensation for damages and losses.
The conference should publish a third draft of its conclusions on Saturday at 0800 (GMT), the British presidency reported. Normally after this document a plenary session is opened, in which all the parties present their complaints or satisfactions, before closing the conference.
The decisions of the UN conferences on climate change are not mandatory, but the climate urgency has been progressively permeating governments, in the face of alarmist reports by scientists from the HIM-HER-IT, which ensure that the world is heading for an increase in temperature “catastrophic”.
“Definition of insanity”
The day on Friday was once again prolix in solemn declarations of the political leaders, and mixed reactions regarding the level of ambition of the final document.
Subsidizing fossil fuels is “madness”, launched the American John Kerry in the long plenary session that was examining the second draft of the presidency.
“We have to see money on the table to help the developing world make the necessary changes” and “it has to happen in the next few hours ”, urged the host of the conference, the British minister Boris Johnson, during a visit in South East London.
One of the big issues is the $ 100 billion annually pledged since 2009 to developing nations. Not only in 2021 this was still unfulfilled, but now a large number of countries are asking for much more, sums that go up to US $ 1.3 trillion a year, starting in 2025.
Among the observers, Vanessa Pérez-Cirera, head of the environmental NGO WWF, suggested, for example, that to gather this sum “The billions that are spent annually on subsidizing fossil fuels are eliminated.”
Before the plenary assembly, Kerry, special envoy for the climate, denounced precisely the “Trillions of dollars in subsidizing fossil fuels” spent by USA “in the last five or six years ”.
“That’s the definition of insanity”, affirmed the diplomat. “Those subsidies have to disappear”he insisted.
In addition to subsidizing oil companies, the US federal government later imposes a tax on consumers, with which in 2016 it raised more than US $ 36 billion, according to data from the Department of Transportation.
“Ineffective subsidies”
Looking for an agreement, the second draft resolution asked the countries “Phasing out unmitigated coal-fired power and ineffective fossil fuel subsidies.”
Coal-based power plants “Without mitigation” They are those that do not use CO2 capture technology to offset part of the gases that they emit into the atmosphere.
This is an unprecedented mention of these fuels, largely responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
But that draft was a step back from the first version, common in the complex arena of climate negotiations.
More ambition for 2022
regretting that “The revised draft has regressed in key areas”, Pérez-Cirera welcomed the fact that “the short-term increase in climate commitments for 2022 continues to appear in the text, although it is still insufficient for the goal of +1.5 ºC.”
Under a mechanism established in 2015, countries must review their targets every five years, the next time in 2025.
But, since his arrival at Glasgow, the most vulnerable nations insisted that the reviews be done annually.
More needs to be done
Greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution have already caused a temperature rise of +1.1 ºC and its catastrophic consequences, including droughts and floods, will only worsen, experts warn.
In the first ten days of the COP26 Pompous announcements did not stop raining down: new targets for India, the world’s fourth largest emitter, promises to stop deforestation by 2030 and emit 30% less methane, a gas with 80 times more greenhouse effect than CO2.
Even China and the United States, first and second global emitters, unexpectedly agreed to jointly strengthen the fight against climate change despite their deep disagreements in other fields.
However, the HIM-HER-IT warned that with all this the planet is still headed for a “catastrophic” heating of +2.7 ºC and that more needs to be done.
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