COP26: why is this 2021 the most political climate summit in recent years?

“I am not optimistic as to what is being done to respond to the climate change -says Ian Vásquez, doctor in Chemical and Environmental Engineering and professor at PUCP-. But in this COP26 I think some furniture will be saved”.

The searchlights are already pointing at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, which will take place from this Sunday 31 in Glasgow (Scotland), and there is the feeling that it will be a mere procedure, a meeting for photographs and nothing more.

The Swedish activist said so Greta Thunberg and some other famous of Hollywood it has used its networks to call on world leaders to stop politicking and do something tangible.

Even CNN has wondered if the summit will be a failure, because “some of the most important G20 countries″ Delay the publication of their Nationally Determined Contributions (CDN).

“There is also concern about the symbolic absence of several key leaders. It is unlikely that the president of China, Xi Jinping, leader of the country with the most greenhouse gas emissions in the world, which has not left China since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic″ Adds the medium.

And even though Ian Vásquez maintains that some agreements will be reached during COP26, he also knows perfectly well that these will be of very little use.

“These fears that more ambitious agreements will not be reached always appear days before the event takes place. And this COP26 is particularly important because countries have already had a decade to implement their contributions to reduce emissions by 2030”.

“With that in mind, in this meeting there will be commitments, as there always were, with the exception of the COP of Copenhagen which was a fiasco. But they will be insufficient and they will leave us a disappointment”.

BACKGROUND PROBLEMS

What was sought with the meetings prior to COP26 was for the countries to agree to prevent the planet’s temperature from increasing between 1.5 and 2 degrees, with respect to pre-industrial values.

But the reports already say that it is too late. Vásquez explains it:

“We know, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which was published in early August, which humanity is already facing climate change. What is inevitable”.

“It is up to us whether it is mild or moderate, or whether it is more harmful and that we experience very complicated situations towards the end of the century.”.

More famines are coming, the flora and fauna will suffer, as well as certain places in the Land they will become uninhabitable.

Against the best decisions for the planet, there are economic and, fundamentally, political questions.

The Argentine political analyst, Hernán Molina, proposes to think about the electricity plants operated with coal in the mines of West Virginia, United States.

“In that republican state, initiatives that seek to stop these types of plants from operating are blocked”.

On the contrary (and in addition to the party’s refusal to take global warming seriously), jobs and people’s peace of mind are prioritized.

“Meanwhile, the smallest economies wonder how they adopt new technologies if they do not have access to it, how they make paradigmatic changes in their way of living if, with what we have today, they are not enough to live”.

Are we talking about the most political COP26 in recent years?

“Reaching the Paris Agreement was a titanic work and many things were not accomplished. How do we go about reaching a more ambitious and aggressive deal? How do we do it if there are countries, like China, that are not willing to relegate their economic growth even when they are going to have a catastrophic impact on the planet??”

The problems, of course, do not come only from one side. “The United States does not have a congressionally approved federal policy on climate change. Everything ends up being through a federal agency and that gives you the guideline of how problematic the issue is”.

“Remember, also, that Donald Trump, before assuming the presidency in 2017, said that climate change was a lie. Later, he removed the country from the Paris Agreement”.

Vasquez adds to this position.

“This has created a deterrent effect in less developed countries. As much as countries with larger economies talk about the issue, if the less wealthy states do not see a correlation with the facts, they will say: ‘I have other things on the agenda, I have to fight poverty, famine, or else. coronavirus’ ”.

“Meanwhile, time is ticking”.