Gabon Env. Minister; Once Large #s Of People In Rich Countries Die From Warming, Expect Action

[hatrack]

The world will only take meaningful action on the climate crisis once people in rich countries start dying in greater numbers from its effects, Gabon’s environment minister has said, while warning that broken promises on billions of dollars of adaptation finance have left a “sense of betrayal” before Cop27. Lee White said governments were not yet behaving as if global heating was a crisis, and he feared for the future he was leaving to his children. He said the $100bn of promised climate finance from rich nations was not reaching poor countries, which was driving distrust in the UN climate process.

The UN has framed Cop27, which begins next week in Sharm el-Sheikh, as “the Africa climate conference”, and loss and damage finance for countries experiencing the worst consequences of global heating will be a key issue. “With everything that’s happened in the last year in the Horn of Africa and Pakistan – those places really count,” White said. “But with the once-in-a-500-year drought in Europe, fires in France, and the New York subway becoming Niagara Falls, we might be at a point where things are getting bad enough that developed nations start taking the climate more seriously.

EDIT

Gabon, one of the most forested nations and home to more than half of the remaining critically endangered African forest elephants, is holding one of the largest ever sales of carbon credits, generated by protecting its portion of the Congo basin rainforest, the world’s second largest and the last that sucks in more carbon than it releases. White said his country, which gets about 60% of its state revenue from oil, accepted that the oil economy would go and that greater emphasis needed to be placed on sustainable forestry and timber.

“We’ve not really actively promoted the death of the oil industry like Costa Rica,” he said, referencing the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance launched at Cop26 in Glasgow by the Central American country and Denmark. “We recognise that the oil industry will disappear.” The politician, originally from Manchester, said he had seen only small amounts of climate funding for his country despite big promises, which was driving frustration with the UN climate process. “Over and over again, developed nations have committed and not delivered.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/31/nothing-will-change-on-climate-until-death-toll-rises-in-west-says-gabonese-minister-aoe

[2naSalit]

1. He's, sadly, correct.

[Voltaire2]

2. Or not.

As the west descends into fascist lunacy an alternative scenario is that we double down on denial. I’m sure we can come up with many alternate explanations for flooded cities and empty reservoirs, all involving blaming assorted groups of people we can identify as ‘others’.

[2naSalit]

3. Good point.

[hatrack]

4. Very possibly - about 70,000 people died in the 2003 EU heatwave, and nada . . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

[StevieM]

5. Excellent point. When climate change begins to devastate us, the people will be told that liberals

did something wrong, which made the problems happen.

[hatrack]

6. And the Jews, and LGBTQ people, and minorities, and immigrants, and atheists . . .

.

[Voltaire2]

7. Yup. It will be our fault.