Day 4 COP29
DAY 4 Finance
Countries at COP29 asked to find 1 trillion dollars to help those countries at most risk and vunerable to climate change.
1,000000000000 dollars.
This is one million x one million.
They might have been asked to find a Quadrillion (15 zeros) or a quintillion (18 zeros) or even a Vigintillion (63 zeros).
Just as well they didn’t as it has been estimated by the world population view that there are is only $80 trillion dollars in the world.
Today’s gloom and doom headlines about finance
- The deforestation law was postponed. The proposed law stated beef products, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy and wood, and their derivative products must not come from deforested land, and importers must guarantee full traceability.
- The 10 countries most impacted by climate change between 2000-2019 received less than 2% of all climate finance
- Parts of Spain woke up to fresh warnings of flooding today, just weeks after heavy rains killed more than 200 people.
- Another destabilising geopolitical move yesterday was the news that Argentina’s negotiating team have been ordered home. The country’s president Javier Milei has previously called the climate crisis a “socialist lie”, and threatened to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
- Azerbaijan’s president Iham Aliyev accused France of “brutally” suppressing climate-impacted communities in its overseas territories, which he called “colonies” As a result, France’s ecology minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher announced she was cancelling her trip to Baku next week
Today, 93 experts and organisations have signed an open letter calling for government action to tackle climate misinformation on social media sites.
Open Letter: Governments Should Act Now to Curb Climate Disinformation
[ Published on 13.00 PM – GMT+4 -14.11.2024 – Baku]
Holding Platforms Accountable
Specifically, governments must encourage these companies to:
- Acknowledge the threat: Publicly recognize climate disinformation as a major threat to the information ecosystem, hindering climate action and policy, and risking public safety and health.
- Adopt a universal definition: Adopt a definition of climate disinformation as deceptive or misleading online behaviour that: Undermines public understanding of the existence or impacts of climate change, the unequivocal human influence on climate change, and the need for corresponding urgent action to reduce global warming emissions (mitigation) and prepare for the current impacts and those we must expect (adaptation),
according to the IPCC scientific consensus and in line with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement; Misrepresents scientific data, including by omission or cherry-picking, to erode trust in climate science, climate-focused institutions, experts, and solutions; or Falsely publicises efforts as supportive of climate goals that in fact contribute to climate warming or contravene the scientific consensus on mitigation or adaptation, including greenwashing. - Produce, publicise and resource a transparent company plan to stop the spread of climate disinformation
- Increase transparency and reporting
- Have transparent and open pathways for researchers to access data
- Prevent monetization of climate disinformation
- Implement platform-wide inoculation efforts to increase the resilience of users to false or misleading content before they are exposed to it
- Ensure strong labour policies
- Address the impact of emerging technologies such as AI.
There is hope - there is good news
Renewables’ growth could overtake coal by 2025
Clean renewable energy looks set to become the world’s biggest source of power by 2025, overcoming coal, according to the IEA.
Renewables are set to account for more than 90% of global electricity expansion over the coming years. Global renewable power capacity is predicted to increase by 2,400 gigawatts between 2022 and 2027.
While there is still some way to go on the journey to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, it seems we are heading in the right direction. Extending the metaphor, the question is… are we travelling fast enough? Source: World Economic Forum
Today at COP29 was so miserable and so depressing that you would struggle to get out of bed at all. Everyone was arguing and throwing their toys out of the pram and no one could agree. Two countries have walked out in a huff and gone home and world leaders are trading insults.
However, ever the optimist I went on a search for happiness and found it…. Thank you Angus.
