LOOKING FORWARD TO CLIMATE CHANGE
Editorial . . . . . . .
The 27th Conference of the members of the UN, also known as CoP-27 (the UN Conference on Climate Change 2022), has begun in Egypt. While the general topic of the conference will be climate change, the European Union appears committed to reducing carbon emissions. However, this year several of them switched back to fossil fuels, especially coal, as the security of their energy supply was questioned. The COP27 will concentrate on three primary topics, including reducing emissions, assisting nations in preparing for and dealing with climate change, and getting technical assistance and financial support for developing nations for the aforementioned. Loss and damage financing, which provides funds to help countries recover from the effects of climate change rather than just prepare for them, as well as the creation of a global carbon market, which will strengthen commitments to reduce coal use, are some issues that were not fully resolved or covered at COP26. Climate change or global warming is a complicated phenomenon. The accumulation of greenhouse gases as a result of human activity is one of its causes. The majority of the historical emissions from the development model that today’s industrialized countries adopted are to blame for the current atmospheric concentration of CO2. As a result, it’s important to strike a balance between activities taken to account for the carbon stock that already exists and those taken to limit future emissions. The fact that climate compensation is being discussed for the first time is encouraging. After late-night discussions, delegates at the COP27 decided to place the delicate subject of rich countries’ compensation for poor countries most susceptible to climate change on the official agenda for the first time. Rich countries have resisted official conversations for more than ten years about the so-called loss and damage, or funding, they offer to assist developing nations in coping with the effects of global warming. The opposing claim is that the negative impacts of burning fossil fuels were not sufficiently known or understood scientifically. Because of this, acting in the future is more vital than accounting for the past now that we are aware of what to do. The issue with this is that it raises a lot more questions than it answers. Human-caused emissions, primarily from the combustion of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas, are to blame for global warming. According to the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, which is comprised of climate scientists from the UN, global temperatures have increased by 1.1C and are on track to reach 1.5C. (IPCC).
If temperatures rise by 1.7 to 1.8C above levels of the 1850s, half of the world’s population could be exposed to heat and humidity that endangers their life. When 194 nations ratified the Paris Agreement in 2015, they committed to “pursue efforts” to reduce global temperature increases to 1.5C. If CoP-27 had been able to take decisive action to choose the appropriate course of action in good faith and in the long-term interests of the entire globe, enormous strides would have been achieved toward making the world safer, more peaceful, and cleaner.
