Public action needed to rein in the COP rodeo

It will take some time for the public to pick out the letters in the muddy alphabet soup served up by COP27. This thin gruel was placed on the table after two weeks of hard-core hustling at the world’s most important climate conference. Some say the global climate title fight, where world leaders and their sponsors slug it out in the ring to keep business going as usual, is a failure, serving only to mendaciously foster false hopes. For others, it is an important moment where humanity, staggering through an era of appalling demagoguery and alarming democratic decline, looks to find solutions.

We have had a year of disturbingly lethal weather. In the global north, the UK roasted in 40.3°C record temperatures, swathes of Europe were on fire, killing hundreds, and the US and China were scorched.

Ironically, the world’s chief climate truant, the US, was also smashed by hurricanes.

In SA on April 11, the“Durban bombs a sub tropical influenced storm coalesced with planning failure to cause 459 deaths, and in the Eastern Cape the deluges killed 23.

In the Buffalo City Metro on January 8 and 9, minor storms killed eight, and at 5.30am on August 8, a storm travelling at 126km/h smashed into the city and adjacent coastline, causing extensive damage.

In 2021, the Dispatch launched a weekly Off Track page and was impressed at the response. Our readers are becoming climate smart in the new, unpredictable world.

And yet, from COP27, it appears that many African leaders have taken the myopic view that it’s all about money the polluter must pay.

That is a justified position, but for African countries, among them our own, to say they intend to turn every ounce of their fossil deposits into energy and cash, means it is time for the public to sit up even straighter.

Wealthier nations, the original polluters, with SA not far behind in contributing 12% of carbon emissions, have also stepped up their fossil fuel emissions.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is perhaps a metaphor for this return to the dark age of coal.

Global activists, led by SA’S Climate Justice Charter movement, are calling for an end to “climate apartheid” and “ecocide” and are seeking to formalise an alternative COP, where all people talk without government and fossil lobby meddling.

The core issues are how to move humanity towards renewable energy, and repair the damage done by extractive economics.

As the increase in global average temperature heads to shoot way over 1.5°C, it is clear that only public action from the smallest river health group to global movements taking on corruption and deceit stands the best chance of creating a liveable planet for generations to come.

The core issues are how to move humanity towards renewable energy, and repair the damage done by extractive economics