It’s summit number 26! That summit, which was held on January 31, 2021, means that there were 25 other climate summits that preceded it, but it did not produce tangible results. This summit was held and the climatic emergencies continued (record floods, huge fires, global warming, the decline of the natural environment, the spread of desertification, pollution, earthquakes…etc.) to testify to the failure of those multiple and repeated attempts to solve these environmental problems that pervaded the planet, and that the world began to realize the magnitude of the risks that would surround this planet and those on it during the next 30 or 40 years.
This summit, or as it was called, the Glasgow Conference, is an opportunity for world leaders to discuss what has been accomplished since the historic Paris Conference in 2015 until now. This conference was considered the most important in terms of obligating countries around the world to take measures to limit global warming.
Delegates from nearly 200 countries gathered in Glasgow to search for a way to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, which is to limit the temperature rise to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius, which requires reducing emissions that increase every year. Twenty countries, including the United States and Canada, who are among the top funders of the sector, have pledged to stop funding fossil fuel-based projects abroad by the end of 2022. Yes, these countries have pledged, but the details of these pledges are ambiguous and no timetable has been provided.
More than 40 countries have committed to “declaring the transition from coal – the most polluting type of fossil fuel – to clean energy” in an initiative promoted by the British government, and many of them have made similar commitments such as Poland and France, but large countries are involved in this sector, such as Australia, China, India, the United States, Japan and Russia, were not among the signatories. What is the reason for these countries objecting to signing up to abide by this procedure? Isn’t the main reason for that to be preserving its interests and scrambling to make profits, even if it is in that danger to all of humanity?!
At the opening of the climate conference, at a time when environmental experts are sounding the alarm, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the act to “save humanity,” saying: “It is time to say ‘Enough’.” And he continued, “Enough violating biodiversity. Enough killing ourselves with carbon. Enough treating nature as a rubbish dump. Enough of burning and digging and extracting at greater depths. We are digging our own graves.”
To whom does he cry out? To the poor countries that are waiting for aid, assistance and loans from this country, that bank, or that union? Or to the great countries that run the world and contribute the most to these environmental disasters, then evade responsibility and do not commit to signing and only pledge, and keep that pledge as ink on paper? Who will save humanity from this danger and its leader is a capitalist system that is incapable of finding solutions, accustomed to procrastinating, evading and scattering ashes so that its flaws are not exposed and its corruption is revealed? How does humanity anticipate solutions from those who create problems in it? How can you wait for a good life and survival from a regime that is filled with corruption and spreads death and annihilation?!
They express their concern, as it is the “last chance” as described by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who stressed that “we must act now” and spoke of an outburst of popular anger that “cannot be contained” if the summit fails to achieve the desired goal! Failures are looming, and failure is a broad title for this summit, like its predecessors. There have been many summits, and with each summit held, the question remains: Were the problems of the environment resolved or did they become more and more complex? And why?!
It is not strange for capitalist countries that their commitments are mercurial and vague. These countries are like chameleons that change color according to their place, so they appear in such summits, seeking solutions, expressing their concerns, helping poor countries to save them. In fact, they are a bloodsucker of the peoples, a robber and violator of wealth and capabilities, an exploiting colony, whose only concern is to achieve interests and collect profits.
With every climate summit held, promises abound and pledges become numerous – but after this summit has passed and the agreements remain ink on paper and the date of another summit arrives – the participants stand criticizing and demanding the implementation of the promises of the previous summit to plant false hopes for their implementation in their new summit, according to the French Foreign Minister Laurent Vasos, who led the Paris conference so the Glasgow Conference is the “working conference in which we implement the Paris Agreement.” Words, decisions and pledges must be transformed into actions. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, described what is happening as a red alert for humanity, calling on world leaders to provide answers when the next World Climate Change Summit takes place.
Although environmental problems concern the human being as a person to live in appropriate environmental conditions, the objection of the United States to the commitment to work on addressing these problems, especially global warming, exposes its corrupt policy. Whether these factories are their own factories or were they in other places through globalization, which will lead to the closure or transformation of some industries, which will have a bad effect and reduce the material profit of the manufacturers, which contradicts the material value that is on the ladder of all values for them… America refuses to abide by what was decided at the conference, even if people suffocate and perish, or if pollution increases and becomes rampant, all of that is of no value as long as the material benefit is achieved. It has dealt with such situations before, as it – which is the superpower – gave (the fight against terrorism) a special explanation and a specific and distinct concept, and here it is giving the same kind of explanation to the pollution of the environment. As long as this pollution revives its industry and serves its interests, it is acceptable and commendable, but if it is other than what it sees and what it wants, it is reprehensible, rejected, and harmful to the environment, harmful to humans.
It is a summit that will once again expose the false promises and false vows of the world leaders to limit climate change and its effects; from rising sea levels, bad weather, and so on. It is a summit that will not be better than the summits that preceded it, and the emergence of thousands of activists and the invitation of the organizers of the global movement “Fridays for Future” – in the Scottish city where the conference is being held – only to pressure the leaders and protest their slowness in taking appropriate measures to limit climate change, they promise that they meet. They do not believe and make promises and do not fulfill, and to emphasize that this summit, like its predecessors, will not bear fruit.
The environmental problem, like other problems in which humanity is floundering; it worsens and increases, and the global system is unable to solve it, so it promises and does not fulfill and presents covenants and does not implement, and the terms of agreements and obligations remain ink on paper that has no reality, and humanity continues to suffer as a result of the greed of a corrupt, bankrupt capitalist system that is only able to take measures that achieve benefits, even if that leads to eradicating more of humankind. A corrupt, causing corruption, murderous regime that spreads the stench of death everywhere, spreads corruption on land and sea and inflicts destruction on humans, trees and even stones.
[ظَهَرَ الْفَسَادُ فِي الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِي النَّاسِ لِيُذِيقَهُم بَعْضَ الَّذِي عَمِلُوالَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُونَ]
“Corruption has spread on land and sea as a result of what people’s hands have done, so that Allah may cause them to taste ˹the consequences of˺ some of their deeds and perhaps they might return to the Right Path” [TMQ Ar-Rum: 41]
#أزمة_البيئة#EnvironmentalCrisis
Zeina As-Samit
(Translated)