[ad_1]
GLASGOW – Week started with more than one 130 presidents and prime ministers She poses for a group photo in a centuries-old Baroque museum made of red sandstone. There were less than 10 women. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reminded that the median age for hosting the climate summit is over 60.
The week ended with one violent protest thousands of them on the streets of Glasgow. It was led by young climate activists, some of whom were old enough to vote in their own country. They accused world leaders of wasting the little time left to protect their future.
These bookends from the first week of this landmark international climate summit in Scotland reveal a widening divide that threatens to grow larger in the weeks and months to come.
It is mostly the elderly and men who have the power to decide how much the world will warm in the coming decades. It is mostly the youth and women who are most angry at the pace of climate action.
The two sides have quite different views on what the summit should achieve. Indeed, they seem to have different concepts of time.
At the summit, leaders set targets for 2030 at the earliest. In some cases, they set goals for 2060 and 2070, when many of today’s activists will reach retirement age. Activists say change must come soon. They want countries to abruptly stop using fossil fuels and repair the climate damage that is now being felt in every corner of the world, but which is punishing the most vulnerable people, especially in the Global South. For them, a few years is an eternity.
“Now is the time. Yesterday was just the right time,” explains Dominique Palmer, 22, an activist for Fridays for Future International, during a panel discussion at the New York Times Climate Center on Thursday. “We need action right now.”
Social movements have almost always been led by the youth. But what makes the climate movement’s generational divide so obvious, and youth anger so strong, is that world leaders meet and talk about the need to address climate change before most of the protesters are even born, with few conclusions.
Actually, emissions of gases that warm the planet It has increased sharply since the first international climate summit 27 years ago. Now scientists say the world has less than a decade sharp cut emissions to avoid the worst climate consequences. This urgency drives the protesters.
Or as a banner said “Don’t Confuse My Future” at Friday’s show.
World leaders are sensitive to this criticism. His public and private remarks in Glasgow are bound by both tribute to the passion of the youth and some apprehension. They will have to face young voters at home; Many of these leaders have already done so, at least in some countries, including the United States, with climate action emerging as a key election issue. in Germany, voters choose their youngest parliamentThe Green Party’s record of its best result ever and putting climate change high on its agenda.
Mr Johnson, for his part, warned his peers about their legacy. In his keynote speech, future generations will “judge us with a resentment and resentment that eclipses any of today’s climate activists.”
The organizers of the conference took care to include young speakers in the official program. Heads of state and government took the podium one after another this week, reassuring the attendees that they had heard the demands of the youth.
That didn’t impress Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a 24-year-old climate activist who came to Glasgow from the Philippines. “When I hear the leaders say they want to listen to our generation, I think they are lying to themselves,” Ms. Tan said in an interview on the eve of the Friday protests.
If they’re really listening, “they will prioritize people over profit,” he continued.
Eric Njuguna, 19, who hails from Kenya, decided on “Cognitive dissonance”. “At COP26, we expected serious commitments on climate finance and climate mitigation. Commitments are not strong enough.”
There is a huge gap between how leaders and young activists view the summit.
77-year-old US climate ambassador John Kerry marvel on friday in the progress made at this summit.
“I’ve been to a lot of COPs and I’ll tell you there’s a greater sense of urgency at this COP,” Mr. Kerry told reporters.
He acknowledged the complexity of global negotiations. Diplomats are still laying out the rules of the global carbon trade and discussing how to handle claims from countries that played no role in the climate issue but suffered the most severe impacts.
Still, Mr. Kerry said, “In the first few days, even though there were some question marks, I didn’t count real money, real money, so many initiatives that were put on the table.”
German energy minister Jochen Flasbarth highlighted three areas of progress: a global agreement to reverse deforestation by 2030; commitment to reduce methane emissions, also by 2030; and a coal exit plan approved by three dozen countries, if not their biggest users.
“I understand that young people try to push too hard to see concrete implementations rather than abstract goals,” Mr Flasbarth, 59, said on Friday. “But we need these goals.”
But when the leaders spoke to each other away from the cameras, it was clear that the youth’s anger ran deep.
In a closed meeting with fellow ministers, Mr. Flasbarth was heard to voice his concerns that activists are painting all world leaders with the same broad brush and portraying them as guardians of the fossil fuel industry.
“Let’s tell young people that there are differences, not all politicians, but all countries are on the same side,” he said. “Progress is possible, and this is the group of progress.”
Barbara Pompili, Minister of Ecological Transformation of France, said that she recognizes herself in young people at the same meeting attended by a country bloc called High Ambition Coalition. He was also an activist once, he told the other ministers.
But then he continued, choosing a different path. He chose to work inside the system. “I chose to be a politician,” he said. “I chose to try acting.”
The differences between the top decision makers and the protesters outside the barricades extend beyond age and gender. While world leaders and heads of state were mostly men, Glasgow’s streets were filled with young women.
Girls and young women around the world have emerged as some of the most passionate climate activists, arguing that many of the most vulnerable to drought, water shortage and other climate disasters are unskilled women with children to feed. As a result, the climate movement has a shared mission with efforts to educate girls in developing countries.
Young female activists have found a sense of fraternity and empowerment in their climate protests, marches and campaigns. The inspiration for many of these young women is Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, whose climate strikes, which started alone in 2018, turned into a worldwide movement.
Ms Thunberg, 18, was so influential that when she criticized carbon offsets on Wednesday—compensating for carbon emissions in one area by paying for emissions that reduce it elsewhere—a company that validated carbon offsets felt compelled to defend the practice.
Ms Thunberg appeared in front of thousands of cheering crowds in Glasgow on Friday. declaring the summit a failure.
“The COP has turned into a PR event where leaders give eloquent speeches and announce fancy commitments and goals. Behind the scenes, governments of Global North countries still refuse to take drastic climate action,” he said.
This prompted the 55-year-old climate scientist Michael Mann to warn that negotiations between hundreds of countries are complex and that the policies around climate policy are not as simple as they seem. “Activists declaring dead on arrival make fossil fuel managers jump with joy” tweeted, referring to the top. “They want to undermine and discredit the concept of multilateral climate action.”
On Saturday, young protesters were aiming to return to the streets by joining a coalition of other groups on a worldwide day of climate action.
Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate, 24, said protesters were determined to continue the pressure to “continue holding leaders accountable for their actions”.
Daphne Frias, a 23-year-old climate activist from New York, gave a nod to the inevitable: generational change is coming.
“We always say our leaders have failed us,” he said. “We are the new leaders. We are the ones who will make the forward decisions.”
[ad_2]
Source link