It’s 2023. Back at my desk, I thought to write a short piece taking stock of where we are on climate action, and what the latest research is telling us. Even though I am not a sucker for punishment, I promise.
But first, I was struck by Joe Lo’s ‘Thirteen critical questions for international climate action in 2023’, published on Climate Home News. This forward-looking roundup is a nifty prompt for a personal take on climate hopes and fears for 2023.
The 13 questions range from ‘Will World Bank and IMF move the big bucks to climate?’, to which I want to cry out a rhetorical lament of ‘Why, why, have they not done this already?”, to ‘Will Europe lock in more gas?’, to which my rather more hopeful response is ‘I think not. Surely not.’
Along the way, Lo asks whether Lula will save the Amazon, if shipping will catch up on climate, and if there will there be a clamp down on corporate greenwash. Of course, we want the answers to these three questions to be positive – but I’m sure you have already seen recent reports of Brazilian scientists’ growing fears that the Amazon is on the verge of tipping over into savannah. If this happens in a matter of decades, there will be profound knock-on effects on the global climate. And it will be a catastrophe for many of the plant and animal species in the world’s largest rainforest, and for millions of people who live there.
There are two of Lo’s questions that particularly resonate for me: ‘Who will pay and who will get loss and damage funds?’, and ‘Will rich countries finally meet their $100bn promise?’ Of the latter, words almost fail me, but I can just about manage to croak out ‘I should bloody well hope so.’ It has been 13 years since this was promised at the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, COP 15.
With loss and damage, we saw a breakthrough at last year’s talks in Sharm-el-Sheikh, COP 27. At last, an agreement was reached to initiate a ‘loss and damage fund’ for people who are victims of climate change-induced disasters. As always, the details of this will determine whether is it fair and effective. The money also needs to be independent and additional to adaptation funds – existing and promised.
I hope for progress on all these significant areas in 2023. And I know that climate mass movements are growing and exerting pressure on governments. Actions at the ballot box are instigating change too – as Lo points out, in 2022 Australians and Brazilians voted in politicians who are already undoing the harmful climate legacies of their forebears.
But I am worried about the accelerating ravages of climate change – see John Vidal’s take on this in The Guardian – and I do fear that Big Oil will have too much influence at COP 28 in Dubai – yet another summit to be held in one of the major fossil fuel exporting countries. Let us hope it is their last stand.