RIGHTING THE WRONGS
Climate activists transformed the Eiffel Tower with this banner for the Global Financing summit in Paris.
Last week, a group of leaders came together in Paris to discuss a new global financing pact.
Proposals included transforming financial mechanisms to help developing nations adapt to the punishing effects of climate change without embroiling themselves further in unsustainable levels of debt.
The ‘Bridgetown Initiative’ as it has been dubbed, is part of a set of measures attempting to address the increasing chasm between the global north and south as climate disasters exacerbate inequalities around the globe.
Opinions were divided on whether the summit was a success: key leaders were notably absent, including our own, and there were no concrete decisions on debt relief. Long overdue climate finance payments still fall far short of what is required.
But a roadmap for change was agreed, and its urgency was underlined by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his characteristically eloquent opening words:
“The international financial system is in crisis…
We can take steps right now – and take a giant leap towards global justice.
I urge you to make this meeting not just a cri du cœur for change, but a cri de guerre – a rallying cry for urgent action.
We are at a moment of truth and reckoning.
Together, we can make it a moment of hope.”
In my latest speculative thriller, ONE, a new UK government has implemented radical measures to adapt to a world ravaged by the climate crisis. Tired of broken promises, a public desperate for actions not words has voted in the ONE Party. One the surface, they appear to be managing things rather well.
Investment in climate tech and major shifts in policy and law have brought Britain self-sufficiency and security in food, water and energy. Air quality has been restored and excess carbon dioxide sucked from the air. Jobs are plentiful. Education and healthcare are good.
But this has come at a cost.
The UK is an Orwellian state. Everything is rationed, monitored and tallied against a weekly quota. What you eat and drink, the energy and transport you use, the things you buy.
Even how many children you can have.
A one-child policy is ruthlessly enforced, and intrusive surveillance makes it inescapable.
My protagonist, Kai, works in the Ministry of Population and Family Planning and is very good at her job. Until she turns up for work one day, and realises the illegal sibling on her Ministry hit-list is hers.
Like all totalitarian regimes, the ONE Party pitches endless propaganda lauding its successes, contrasting them with news reels flaunting the devastation and disasters overseas.
Huge swathes of people are forced to abandon their homelands to wildfires, floods and drought and migrate across continents. But far from supporting them, the ONE Party does everything within its power to keep climate refugees out.
This is the price UK citizens are willing to pay for keeping the lights on, for knowing there will be food on the table. For staying ‘safe’, while less fortunate nations burn or sink beneath the waves.
I sourced this tree map from Our World in Data. The size of each rectangle corresponds to the sum of CO2 emissions generated by each country from industrial production between 1751 and 2017.
The numbers are stark. They show that 28 European nations are responsible for generating a third of all emissions to date, and the USA is responsible for generating a quarter, which is twice the amount of China.
In contrast, most countries across Africa have been responsible for less than 0.01% of all emissions over the last 266 years. And yet they are the ones already bearing the brunt of the impacts.
The reality is that the UK, through luck of geography, wealth and tech will suffer much less from climate change impacts than many other nations. Most of whom are not responsible for generating those CO2 emissions in the first place. Those living in the equatorial band across the global south are most at risk and are the least prepared to deal with the climate crisis.
In many cases, their resources have been exploited for consumption by wealthier nations which means they are left without the ability to adapt. Even though they have done the least to create the problem.
Let’s not forget that greenhouse gases hang around in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and carbon dioxide may last even longer, so the impact of these emissions will continue to be felt over multiple generations with dramatic effects on surface air temperature and ocean warming, and all the devastation such warming entails.
I don’t normally go heavy on charts in my blogs, but I had to include this one.
Of course, I knew logically this must be the case, but I had never seen the UK’s fossil fuel legacy presented so bluntly.
The UK may only contribute around one percent of global fossil fuel and industry emissions today, but this shows the historical burden that our industry had, and continues to have on our planet.
To me, these two charts encapsulate climate injustice. Consumption is the great divide.
And our history is marked by an ever widening gulf between the rich and the poor.
The poorest half of the global population generates just 10% of emissions.
Whereas the richest 10% of people generate over half the world’s emissions.
Which brings us back to the Bridgetown Initiative. Everyone deserves the right to live in a healthy environment. It’s not just about how countries are behaving now, although that is clearly very important, at some point there must be a reckoning and a rebalancing for what was done in the past.
According to Oxfam, the number of climate-related disasters has tripled in the past thirty years and these are now the number one cause of internal displacement.
We are about to see the largest migration in human history: the UN predicts there will be 1 billion climate migrants by 2050.
What will our response be?
Will we just pull up the drawbridge, and leave less fortunate nations to fend for themselves, as the ONE Party does in my book? Look after number one? Is that just?
Or will we face our responsibilities and help those people made homeless by climate change?
And put in place a global finance structure that not only enables developing economies to weather the coming storms, but to flourish, in a sustainable way.
“Sharp perception and intense images shine out of every page.
Eve Smith is a master storyteller for our troubled times.”