While Nations Fail, the Emergency Grows

The time for rhetoric was over long ago. The reality is that nations are failing the entire world.

Facing the greatest threat to the survival of mankind, the great nations − the main culprits in this emergency − decided to act with accustomed arrogance. The disappointment generated by the U.N. Climate Change Conference, COP25, which ended in Madrid this weekend, demonstrates the disconnect between the manifest urgency represented by climate change and the political will to prevent the situation from reaching a crisis.

The climate emergency has shown how little our countries are prepared to respond to an essentially global problem. The challenge is so great that one would expect consensus in response to be the priority on all nations’ agendas. What we have seen, however, is that the most concerned are the island countries − those that will be the most affected by a crisis they did not cause − while the most responsible are comfortably obstructing needed change.

Maybe it was naive to expect a different result. After all, in the United States, there is a climate emergency denier; in Brazil, there is a president who blames nongovernmental organizations for the fires in the Amazon; in India, there is an increasingly populist and isolationist government; in China, there is double-talk about the importance of sustainability, as long as it does not affect economic development.

While a group of countries led by the European Union was waiting for the COP25 to reach forceful agreements for dealing with the emergency, the countries mentioned above engaged in obstruction. The result is that, although the summit was extended by two days, the final agreement is replete with vague language and few serious commitments. The imminent climate emergency was not enough for common sense to prevail.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres declared he was disappointed because “the international community has lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition in mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis.”

“The world is watching us and is waiting for more concrete solutions from us. For this reason, today we are not satisfied,” said Chilean Minister of the Environment Carolina Schmidt, who led the summit.

This is about the sounds of weeping we have heard; the time for rhetoric was over long ago. The realisty is that nations are failing the entire world. It is impossible not to think of the question asked − with rightful anger − by Greta Thunberg a few months ago: “How dare you?”

There are some positive aspects. Nearly 80 countries have pledged to present much more ambitious plans next year to reduce carbon emissions. But without the participation of large polluters, that amounts to no more than a warm compress.

Perhaps at the COP26 in Glasgow next year − one hopes with a new U.S. president who no longer sees this issue as a joke − better agreements will be reached. Recent history fails to offer much hope.