WHY do I sound like a prophet of doom and catastrophe when I write about the consequences of global warming? It’s now nearing 1.5 degrees Celsius. In fact, the global mean surface air temperature was 1.54 C above the pre-industrial average from January to September this year. World leaders and scientists set 1.5 C as the dangerous red line at the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) in Paris in 2015 — a figure adopted by 196 countries.
Scientists say 2024 is now on track to be the hottest year in the history of the planet, and the consequences of this are dire and dangerous for all living creatures.
This is all due to human activity: the industrial expansion through the nonstop burning of fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal since the start of the industrial era in 1840. Over 75 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and nearly 90 percent of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions come from the combustion of these fuels, most by industrialized countries.
These gases shroud the Earth like a blanket, and the heat from the sun cannot escape back into space. We are roasting ourselves — and everything else on the planet — to death. Millions of people in huge Asian cities, like Manila, Mumbai in India and Lahore in Pakistan, are choking to death because of air pollution. Air pollution was responsible for 66,230 deaths in the Philippines in 2019 alone. Of that number, 64,920 were adults, and 1,310 were children. Most of the pollution comes from burning fossil fuels.
There are millions of good people — climate activists, campaigners and others — sacrificing themselves to protect Philippine forests and rivers, and many are being killed. Their rights and dignity must be protected, as well as the environment, to save the planet from more natural disasters.
Power plants running on fossil fuels must be replaced with facilities using renewable energy sources like wind turbines and solar and geothermal power plants. At last year’s UN Climate Change Conference or COP28, all nations signed a binding agreement to move away from fossil fuels.
As I said before, we have reached 1.54 C — a point of almost no return where one catastrophe causes an even bigger one, which leads to a third or even a fourth; the cycle of destruction continues. In Spain’s eastern Valencia region, a year’s worth of rain fell within eight hours. The floods it caused killed at least 250 people. There is much more to come like that. The Philippines suffers severe loss and damage due to powerful typhoons every year. They destroy homes, fields, roads and bridges; sink ships; and cause crop loss and infrastructure damage worth billions of pesos. The deaths and suffering they cause are immense.
The 2015 Paris Agreement recognized the great damage caused by climate change to small, non-industrialized countries and the rich industrialized nations as the biggest sources of GHG. These rich countries are bound to provide climate finance to offset the damage. The Philippines is claiming some percentage of the $100 billion approved in 2019 but has never been fully paid each year except in 2022. The deal expires this year, and the said amount is considered insufficient since the climate crisis worsens year after year as the planet gets hotter and CO2 in the atmosphere is not decreasing.
How much the payment increase would be is the challenge posed at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Campaigners are calling for an increase of $500 billion to $1 trillion. Some say $5 trillion is needed to offset the climate loss and damage.
The increase would enable undeveloped and underdeveloped countries to move from fossil fuel sources of power generation to renewables. In the Philippines, the transition is much too slow. Corruption at various levels of government is causing artificial delays to building solar power transmission lines of Aboitiz’s solar plant in Zambales, to cite one example.
Scams involving payments for permits are commonplace among some officials and can hold up a project for a year or more as they haggle for the amount. Other causes are the delays in phasing out coal-fired power plants that contribute to climate change. The fund called “loss and damage,” administered by the World Bank and set up in COP28 to support damaged countries like Pakistan, which suffered devastating floods, and the Philippines, which is suffering more typhoon damage than ever before, is yet to begin payouts.
Rich nations producing most of the world’s GHG should compensate low-income countries that generate no CO2 but suffer the consequences of global warming the most.
The Guardian newspaper quoted climate advocate Debbie Hillier: “Climate finance is not about charity or generosity but responsibility and justice. It is based firmly on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities — those who contributed most to the climate crisis must bear the brunt of the solution.”
Among the greatest “sinners” in causing global warming and CO2 emissions are powerful industrialized countries like China, the United States, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea and Russia. They should all pay their fair share, but they do not and say they can’t afford it. So the climate activists at Baku this week are calling for megarich companies to be taxed to generate the compensation. The rich governments that gave them permits to operate must pay up, too. That is only right. The megarich oil firms are against phasing out fossil fuels and continue to deny climate change with some very ignorant politicians.
World leaders must succeed in ending the dependency on fossil fuels, or we will all perish in a disaster — not of our own making, but of the tycoons and oil cartels controlling the world economy, causing catastrophe and poverty. The hope is that nongovernmental organizations will combine their efforts to avert more disasters and win greater compensation at COP29.
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This column was first published in The Sunday Times (www.manilatimes.net) on November 17, 2024. Print, digital, and online republication of this column without the written consent of the author and of The Manila Times is strictly forbidden.
