Page 15 - Islands Business October 2023 edition

COP28 COP28

for Conservation website reads. and his rhetorical force” to end 35 years of avoiding the
He reckons we’re beyond what National Geographic’s Dr elephant in the room.
Friedlander referred to as “the scale of impacts that the “What Guterres, through this climate ambition summit has
planet can absorb”. offered the world, is an opportunity for us not to just address
“The earth’s thermostat broke in March,” he told Islands the symptoms, but actually go after big oil—coal and gas, so
Business on the sidelines of a regional symposium on ocean that we can be able to phase out fossil fuels and rapidly phase
science in the Pacific. in renewables. And in the process, address the energy poverty
Which is why he believes the ocean thermal spike should that the world is facing.”
top the COP28 agenda. Jean Su, Co-Chairwoman of Climate Action Network-
“Most people don’t know that. It hasn’t been going out on International, the world’s largest network of climate
the news properly. But something happened to the earth’s organisations, said the summit was unprecedented in the
temperature. It started in the ocean, not in the atmosphere, international context.
which is kind of strange. “This is an unprecedented moment in our climate
“In March, the temperature started going up and off-scale, framework. Neither the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework
unprecedented. Every year, it’s going a little higher from Convention on Climate Change) nor the Paris Agreement
climate change. But now, it’s broken away from where it recognised fossil fuels. So today, the UN Secretary-General
should be and it’s way up. It’s five standard deviations above has broken a barrier … a glass ceiling,” said Su.
the mean. And it’s never happened before in history, and
people don’t know exactly why.” Upping the ante
Dr Kerby’s assessment of the trend is a grim one. Gutteres upped the ante when he precluded his climate
“Somehow, Mother Nature has accelerated the problem to ambition summit from becoming the usual talk fest, by
the point where it’s like we’ve accelerated 20 years into the inviting only the “first movers and doers”—countries that
future. This is no longer 2023 for climate change. This is 2033 were committing to strong action on climate change. Those
or 2043. We are somewhere in between. who were not invited to speak included the world’s two top
“So, what’s happening in the Caribbean? They’ve had polluters—the United States and China. U.S. Special Envoy on
38-degree water. That’s hot tub water. And anything higher Climate Change, John Kerry was in the audience but was not
than that can kill people if they stay there for 10 minutes. So, given a place at the podium.
38 degrees kills the corals and the fish. Now that hot water is Adow was keen to observe that Gutteres had deviated from
in Cuba and going to Belize and all the Caribbean. the conventions of international diplomacy.
“People are praying for cyclones now to cool off the water “What we’ve seen now is a Secretary-General who is happy
because we’re having a mass extinction event of corals in the not to pull punches and that for a politician is effectively
Caribbean. And guess what? It’s coming our way. It’s coming to withdrawing the mic,” he said.
Kiribati.” “We know how much they love the mic and the world
stage to be able to actually sell us their pitiful offering. This
Opening the gates of hell strategy that the UN Secretary-General has employed in New
“Humanity has opened the gates of hell,” were the stark, York this time, has effectively denied the mic to every country
opening words from United Nations Secretary-General, Atonio that has nothing to offer. Now they have to earn the right to
Guterres when he convened the Climate Ambition Summit speak to the world by actually offering more credible, more
during the UN General Assembly in New York in September. ambitious climate action.”
A long-fractured global agenda over the greatest existential The moment was framed as a decisive victory for small
threat to the planet finally seemed to hit that elusive common island states who’ve been pushing for a clampdown on fossil
note at the Summit, when Guterres put fossil fuel producers fuel production.
on notice—to huge applause from the pro-climate, anti-fossil Adow and the other leaders of the world’s biggest climate
fuel lobby. activist groups issued their responses to Gutteres’ remarks at
“The move from fossil fuels to renewables is happening— a media conference at the UN hosted by Vanuatu’s Permanent
but we are decades behind,” said Guterres. Representative to the United Nations, Odo Tevi.
“We must make up time lost to foot-dragging, arm-twisting Last year, Tuvalu’s Prime Minister, Kausea Natano called for
and the naked greed of entrenched interests raking in billions a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty at COP27, while Vanuatu
from fossil fuels.” became the first country to call for the treaty at the UN
The UN head drew widespread applause from the heads of General Assembly.
the world’s major climate activist bodies who were among the Actress and climate activist, Jane Fonda and Tzeporah
“first movers and doers” at the summit—those leaders who Berman of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative
had responded to the Secretary-General’s call for accelerated flanked Tevi alongside other leading global climate
action to tackle the climate crisis. campaigners at the media event as they welcomed the
Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa, who spoke on behalf breakthrough.
of civil society at the Summit, said the UN Secretary-General
needed to be applauded for offering “his convening power Continued on page 18

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