Author: Charles Gregoire

John D. Liu and Maximilian Abouleish-Boes will discuss the practical work of ecological restoration with real life examples from their work in this field.

Energy justice is the critical issue of our time and the COP. Amid a global energy crisis caused by geopolitical instability, big oil and executives flood the COP to slow climate action. Meanwhile people throughout the world lack access to basic reliable energy and suffer environmental and climate injustice from pollution and the climate crisis. How will the world transition from fossil fuel in a way that is equitable, just and done in time to save our world?

A world awash in plastic will soon see even more, as a host of new petrochemical plants — their ethane feedstock supplied by the fracking boom — come online. Companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, and Saudi Aramco are ramping up output of plastic — which is made from oil and gas, and their byproducts — to hedge against the possibility that a serious global response to climate change might reduce demand for their fuels.

Petrochemicals, the category that includes plastic, now account for 14 percent of oil use, and are expected to drive half of oil demand growth between now and 2050. The World Economic Forum predicts plastic production will double in the next 20 years. At the same time, pollution from petrochemical production is killing frontline communities and plastics fill landfills and oceans.

People are taking action, however. Several nations are working on plastic and petrochemical treaties. Activists and policymakers are fighting petrochemicals and plastics. This program features advocates and experts discussing what can be done at COP and beyond to stop the hybrid threat of plastics and petrochemicals.

Around the world many projects are being promoted, funded or licensed with claims they can help adaptation to the effects of global heating. Research indicates a range of limitations and adverse effects. Many activities are, in reality, not primarily adaptation-motivated and raise concerns over equality and human rights. Nearly all projects have significant carbon and ecological footprints.

Very few initiatives respond to the bad-to-worst scenarios, or to the psychological aspects of adaptation. No initiatives we are aware of address how to change fundamental economic incentives and drivers that close the space for radical approaches to adaptation at any level. Given these many limitations, in addition to policy and funding catching up with previously expressed commitments to climate adaptation, a more honest conversation is urgently needed about meaningful adaptation to climate chaos. That means breaking with past assumptions.

Ideas and initiatives arising from the same ideology and systems that allowed global heating to reach a crisis will not help us respond well to that crisis, as it worsens over time. Instead, we can articulate less compromised agendas, and support the people around the world who are already pursuing such approaches.

Climate chaos is already causing hunger and conflict in many parts of the world. That these regions have contributed to environmental disruption the least, with some of the lowest historic carbon emissions, is not just a sad fact. It is a self-evident demand for greater support from the regions that are richer today due to both past and present high emissions. This year, the drought in East Africa that has severed food supply for 22 million people is illustrative of both the urgent need and sense of injustice. In addition, floods from record monsoons in Pakistan took 1,500 lives this summer and uprooted 33 million people. Mudslides have inundated villages in Central America, killing dozens and displacing 560,000.

Rich countries, however, very prominently the United States, dismiss calls for greater funding of ongoing loss and damage in the global south due to the climate changes that their own countries are most responsible for. This is due to the liability created by the climate crisis the United States, as the largest historical global emitter, along with other wealthy nations, have caused.

Last year in Glasgow, despite increasing pressure and protest, no action was taken on loss and damage (with the United States again seen as a major reason for inaction). This year, climate justice and loss and damage is expected to be one of the most important issues at COP, and, while expectations are not high, the US is signaling a willingness to discuss the issue more seriously.

As movements worldwide focus on climate justice, there is an increasing need for climate activism to focus on solidarity among and with those most affected in the global South and center the leadership of the global South. This program will focus on loss and damage and feature discussions with climate justice leaders focused on loss and damage advocacy, climate justice and awareness at the COP.

Some of the most worrying science is downplayed in formal processes. Some scientists have believed that such an approach is best to encourage action. Yet the past thirty years of not bending the emissions curve indicates otherwise, as does the rise of climate activism that cites the bad-to-worst case scenarios.

Current data on emissions, atmospheric concentrations, global temperatures, and widening impacts are frightening. Downplaying issues such as the reduction of global dimming due to cleaner air from efforts towards netzero would be neither scientific nor ethical. Yet many well-funded and influential organizations criticize people, particularly the young and the poor, for being ‘too negative’ about the current and future impacts of climate chaos. This form of ‘climate brightsiding’ distorts and limits the climate agenda.

For instance, projects like MEER target these bad situations more clearly than approaches and technologies which currently receive commercial investment and public subsidy. More honesty with the public can start from professionals recognising and ending their own cognitive dissonance. This session ends with the declaration of a Scholars’ Oath to the Future.