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Many countries have been ambiguous in their speeches regarding fossil fuels and the possibility for them to stop financing industries such as coal, oil or gas, which are the ones that pollute the most, is remote. This double standard is debated at the Climate Summit, as well as the unfulfilled promise of the financing of 100,000 million dollars a year by rich countries to developing nations.
As the ‘great last chance’, dozens of leaders have defined COP26. And it is that this climate summit organized by the United Nations is the moment in which world leaders put their new environmental ambitions on the table to achieve the objective of the Paris Agreement: limit global warming so that it does not increase more than 2ºC in this century and, if possible, that it does not exceed 1.5ºC.
In addition, the commitments they present will arrive at a decisive moment in order to change the course we are taking. Despite the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that to achieve the goal of the agreement it was necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030, that pollution has increased by 16 %.
That is why it is time to act, although it is not an easy discussion due to the interests at stake. Although fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas are the ones that pollute the planet the most, most leaders have been ambiguous in their commitments to stop financing these industries and move to renewable energies, such as wind or the solar.
And it is that those fuels are not only the main source of energy today, but also those that drive economies to a large extent. For this reason, the most difficult discussion is what will be the new commitments of the countries regarding these energies.
The other big debate is an unfulfilled promise. At COP15 in Copenhagen, the richest countries pledged that, by 2020, they would give $ 100 billion each year to developing nations. The objective is that with this money they can adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects. It was a form of justice because many of the countries that pollute the least are those that suffer the most from the consequences of global warming.
However, the promise was not kept. According to the OECD, by 2019 developed nations had given less than $ 80,000, the vast majority in loans that complicate the economy of the poorest countries. The idea of this COP26 is to establish new commitments to fulfill the promised financing.
The third pending discussion is the carbon market that created the Paris Agreement. The thesis is that a country that does not significantly reduce its emissions can finance projects in other nations that help reduce polluting gases. But the leaders have already tried to set rules for that market in two previous climate summits and have not been able to. Many hope that COP26 is the time to do it.
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