Many people are demonstrating in Egypt to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
(Photo: IMAGO/TT)
Sharm el-Sheikh It is a pathetic performance that the states afford at the climate conference. Every year, leaders choose stirring, somber words about the state of the earth at the start of the mammoth two-week event. This is followed by dramatic appeals. But then little happens – shockingly little in view of global warming and the painful and expensive weather caprioles in the world.
The effort that the delegations from almost 200 countries make to get to the conference venue is immense. Wherever the meeting takes place, the majority of the participants fly thousands of climate-damaging kilometers in order to then be part of an undignified political haggling.
>> Read here: Industrialized countries resisted this fund for years: This is how an agreement was reached in Sharm el-Sheikh
Man-made climate change continues with well-known consequences: droughts, floods, storms. And the world community is doing too little to slow down global warming. Politicians are not willing or able to change that, at least not at the necessary speed.
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The Paris climate agreement was sealed in 2015 with a lot of effort and optimism. Since then there has been more or less a standstill. The bitter truth is that the measures taken so far are not sufficient for the jointly defined goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. That hasn’t changed in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Toxic mix at the climate conference
But even in the face of multiple crises, the world is not moving closer together. A toxic mix prevents the necessary departure. There is the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, which is leading to a new hunger for fossil, climate-damaging energy sources such as coal, oil and gas.
People demonstrate in Sharm el-Sheikh for the 1.5 degree target.
(Photo: dpa)
And then there is the approach of the United Nations, to wait for the slow and timid for the big consensus and to rely on voluntary commitments. There are geopolitical interests at play that make an agreement difficult. Above all, there are too many listless, uninspired governments that cannot or do not want to generate momentum.
>> Read here: Negotiations at the climate conference in Egypt are tough – these are the reasons
This year’s Egyptian presidency played an inglorious role. She let things slide for the past two weeks, but did not see herself as responsible for bringing together the different positions of the states, let alone setting the pace. The opportunity was thus missed to set an example with an ambitious agreement like that in Paris seven years ago.
The negotiations were not transparent and chaotic – with the result that the countries, sometimes groups of countries, led their own lives for days and stuck to their positions. If that’s the new style, the world community can simply skip future climate conferences.
More: EU vice at climate summit: “Better no result than a bad result”