Climate Activists' Assessment of COP26
Glasgow, Climate Justice March, November 6,
2021.
Climate activists did not mince words about the
fraud of COP26 -- from the exclusion of people's
voices in the discussion, to the refusal to even
consider the impact of NATO, militarism and war on
climate change and the climate crisis, and the
repetition of empty hackneyed phrases like
"commitment to net zero."
Mhairi McCann, from Scotland, was a participant
at COP26. She is the founder of Youth Stem 2030,
an organization focused on empowering youth to
advance the UN's sustainable development goals. An
interview with Mhairi by the North American
Association for Environmental Education was
published online by wildcentre.org. Mhairi said,
"The way COP is organized is not going to be the
way that we get action for tackling climate
change. That has been my overall takeaway. It has
been quite exclusionary in many ways for many
groups of people, both partly because of COVID and
partly otherwise. This is not actually where the
action is going to happen. I wish I could leave on
a more optimistic note than that but that is my
impression from here."
Ramón Mejía, an American veteran of the war on
Iraq and member of the Grassroots Global Justice
Alliance also attended. In an interview with
Democracy Now Ramón said, "[W]hen you have fossil
fuel industries that have a larger delegation than
most of our frontline communities and the global
south, then we're being silenced. This space is
not a space for genuine discussions. It's a
discussion for transnational corporations and
industry and polluting governments to continue to
try and find ways to go as 'business as usual'
without actually addressing the roots of the
conversation."
"There can't be any genuine discussion about
addressing climate change if we are not including
the military. The military, as we know, is the
largest consumer of fossil fuels and also the
largest emitter of the greenhouse gases most
responsible for climate disruption," he said.
"This COP has been dubbed 'net zero' ... but this
is just a false unicorn. It's a false solution,
just the same way as 'greening the military' is.
... [G]reening the military is also not the
solution. We have to address the violence that the
military wages and the catastrophic effect it has
on our world."
 Tamara Lorincz, a
Canadian activist, member of the Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom-Canada
and Voice of Women for Peace, also spoke out,
drawing the connection between militarism and the
climate crisis. Everywhere she went she handed out
flyers on why NATO is a threat to people and the
planet and on the carbon bootprint of the
military, militarization and military spending. In
a report-back to Science for Peace, she said "The
science demands dramatic emissions reductions"
while "net zero, offsets, carbon capture and
storage, and nature-based solutions being peddled
by government and industry are false solutions."
She was extremely discouraged by the heavy police
presence, on horseback and at roadblocks, and
highly secured spaces with fences that kept the
people from being able to participate. Discussion
of peace, militarism and military expenditures,
she said, were absolutely absent from COP26, while
hope for the future is in the international
solidarity movement.
In a news release November 13, Climate Network
Action Canada reported on the reaction of Canadian
civil society and environmental groups and said,
"COP26 was not able to fix the disconnect between
flashy greenwashing and real climate action. The
biggest delegation at COP26 was a group of 500
fossil fuel industry lobbyists. The United Kingdom
welcomed them with open arms. At the same time,
Indigenous people, youth, unions, and
environmental organizations who came to Glasgow to
fight for integrity, ambition and transformative
action faced consistent restrictions and
roadblocks. We will continue to hold Canada
responsible for delivering its fair share of the
global climate effort and ending the colonial
production of fossil fuels."
Neta Crawford, Co-Founder and Director of the
Cost of War Project at Brown University in Boston
was also present at COP26. "I am here because
there are several universities in the UK which
have launched an initiative to try to include
military emissions more fully in the individual
countries' declarations of their emissions," she
said. Every year, every country that is a party to
the treaty from Kyoto "have to put some of their
military emissions in their national inventories,
but it is not a full accounting. And that's what
we'd like to see." She noted that the U.S.
Department of Defense advised the White House back
in 1997 at the time of the Kyoto Climate Summit,
that if military missions were included in the
climate protocols, the U.S. military might have to
reduce its operations. A 10 per cent reduction in
their emissions, the Defense Department officials
said, among other things, would lead to a lack of
readiness for war anytime, anywhere.
Aminath Shauna, Environment Minister for the
Maldives, speaking about the needs of island
nations, said "What is balanced and pragmatic to
other parties will not help the Maldives adapt in
time. For us, this is a matter of survival. We
recognize the foundations that this outcome
provides, but it does not bring hope to our
hearts. The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees
is a death sentence for us."
 Saleemul Hug,
director of the International Centre for Climate
Change and Development in Bangladesh, said, "As
far as I am concerned, it is a failure.... [I've]
come here with a single agenda which is to help
the poorest people on the planet who are already
suffering from the impacts of human-induced
climate change. And we needed a Glasgow facility
on loss and damage finance here. One hundred and
thirty-eight developing countries put language in
the text yesterday. It got removed overnight. It's
not there anymore. It has been replaced by an
offer for a dialogue ... absolutely disappointing
and totally unacceptable."
Asad Rehman of the UK organization War on Want
said, "It's a betrayal of the science, it's a
betrayal of the realities of the climate impacts
that are happening and devastating people's lives
and livelihoods. The only people celebrating this
outcome are the hundreds of lobbyists from the oil
and gas industry, those whose vested interests
basically say, we can't see any change, we can't
move away from the fossil fuel addiction of our
economy."
Glasgow, November 6, 2021
Amanda Mukwashi, CEO of Christian Aid, a UK
organization, said, "We were told that COP26 was
the last best chance to keep 1.5C alive but it's
been placed on life support. Rich nations have
kicked the can down the road and with it the
promise of the urgent climate action people on the
frontline of this crisis need.
"After two weeks of negotiations, the voices of
those experiencing the harsh impacts of climate
change have largely been excluded and not been
heeded. Warm words on loss and damage and finance
for developing countries to adapt to climate
change are not good enough. Rich nations need to
accept their responsibility, put their money where
their mouths are, and provide the billions needed.
Developing nations have done the least to cause
this crisis but have shown commitment to tackling
it."
More than 700 organizations and movements
worldwide issued a call at the outset of COP26 for
real solutions to solve climate change -- not a
continuation of harm dressed up as "net zero"
carbon budgeting. "We don't want to read about
your promises to supposedly balance the emissions
budget by mid-century, using techno-fixes,
geoengineering, carbon markets, and accounting
tricks," they wrote. "We demand that you put
forward real plans to bring emissions and fossil
fuel production down to Real Zero. These plans
must be based on real transformation, backed by
real resources, and implemented with the real
urgency demanded by the current crises." Their
statement is available online at
realsolutions-not-netzero.org.
Opening session of the Peoples' Summit, November
7, 2021
This article was published in
Volume 51 Number 12 - December 12, 2021
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2021/Articles/M5101211.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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