COP26 will be shaken by the young people

Youth will challenge COP26

Victor Angelo

 

I admire Greta Thunberg's determination. She has already done more to fight climate change than many political leaders. And she has above all mobilised young people, thus opening a window of hope for the future. In essence, Greta's civic activism demands that we move from words to deeds and that what was agreed at the Paris climate conference in 2015 is actually implemented.

Next week, she will be in Glasgow, in the framework of COP26. She will remind the official delegations of the pacts signed and will underline that it is now even more urgent to reduce carbon emissions, to protect ecosystems, to finance the energy transition in the poorest countries and to mitigate the worrying effects of global warming. The signs are clear: the past decade has been recorded as the warmest ever. 

There is not much optimism about the possible outcomes of this summit. The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, told us a few days ago that the national commitments already known, coming from around 120 countries and which will be discussed during COP26, fall far short of what is necessary to reverse the current trend, which goes in the wrong direction – a global warming of around 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Such an increase would have catastrophic consequences. Some of these effects are already being felt, in different ways depending on the regions of the world: prolonged droughts or devastating storms, followed by floods that destroy everything in their path; gigantic fires, including in tundra areas; the destruction of a large part of the polar ice cap, glaciers and an increase in sea levels and the salinity of rivers and coastal lagoons; the loss of biodiversity; and the large-scale impoverishment of the most fragile populations. In Africa alone, for example, by 2030, climate change will drive a new wave of over 100 million people into poverty.

What is more, Africa is a continent that remains in the dark. The installed capacity to produce electricity is less than that of Spain, while on one side we have 1.4 billion people and on the other, 47 million. The African case highlights two other truths. First, that rich countries had promised the poorest ones, from 2020 onwards, around 100 billion dollars a year to help them in their energy transition. We are a long way from these figures. Secondly, without an extraordinary effort to electrify Africa, there is no way to develop the continent. The potential for renewable energy is enormous. What is lacking, however, are the financial resources, the knowledge, the technological transfer, and, above all, the political will. This week, for example, European foreign ministers met with their African counterparts in Kigali, Rwanda, to prepare the next Europe-Africa summit. They talked about the fight against COVID-19, historic ties and political partnerships, trade, migration, gender equality - the usual hotchpotch of things to please everyone. In the flowery text that the French, German, Portuguese, and Slovenian ministers published on the subject, there is no mention of COP26 and not a single reference to mobilising investments in the field of energy. Yet without accessible and abundant electricity there will be no economic growth or development.

Another ghost that will roam the corridors of COP26 is called national egoism. At the peak of the pandemic, the great leaders and renowned thinkers told us that after the crisis we would build a better, more balanced, ecological, and solidary world. What we are seeing is exactly the opposite: more economic nationalism, greater demand for fossil energies and a return to old consumer habits. The new man we were promised is the same as before, but more self-centred and with a renewed consumerist fury. This is where Greta and young people like her can shake up COP26 and show that an alternative vision is possible. 

(Automatic translation of the opinion piece I published in the Diário de Notícias, the old and prestigious Lisbon newspaper. Edition dated 29 October 2021)