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An article from the World Economic Forum (reprinted according to terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License “CCPL”)

The COVID-19 coronavirus has forced entire countries into lockdown mode, terrified citizens around the world, and triggered a financial-market meltdown. The pandemic demands a forceful, immediate response. But in managing the crisis, governments also must look to the long term. One prominent policy blueprint with a deep time horizon is the European Commission’s European Green Deal, which offers several ways to support the communities and businesses most at risk from the current crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that human societies are capable of transforming themselves more or less overnight.
Image: REUTERS/Muyu Xu

COVID-19 reflects a broader trend: more planetary crises are coming. If we muddle through each new crisis while maintaining the same economic model that got us here, future shocks will eventually exceed the capacity of governments, financial institutions, and corporate crisis managers to respond. Indeed, the “coronacrisis” has already done so.

The Club of Rome issued a similar warning in its famous 1972 report, The Limits to Growth, and again in Beyond the Limits, a 1992 book by the lead author of that earlier report, Donella Meadows. As Meadows warned back then, humanity’s future will be defined not by a single emergency but by many separate yet related crises stemming from our failure to live sustainably. By using the Earth’s resources faster than they can be restored, and by releasing wastes and pollutants faster than they can be absorbed, we have long been setting ourselves up for disaster.

On one planet, all species, countries, and geopolitical issues are ultimately interconnected. We are witnessing how the outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China can wreak havoc on the entire world. Like COVID-19, climate change, biodiversity loss, and financial collapses do not observe national or even physical borders. These problems can be managed only through collective action that starts long before they become full-blown crises.

The coronavirus pandemic is a wake-up call  to stop exceeding the planet’s limits. After all, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change all make pandemics more likely. Deforestation drives wild animals closer to human populations, increasing the likelihood that zoonotic viruses like SARS-CoV-2  will make the cross-species leap. Likewise, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns  that global warming will likely accelerate the emergence of new viruses.

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How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?

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Governments that succeed in containing epidemics all tacitly follow the same mantra: “Follow the science and prepare for the future.” But we can do much better. Rather than simply reacting to disasters, we can use the science to design economies that will mitigate the threats of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pandemics. We must start investing in what matters, by laying the foundation for a green, circular economy that is anchored in nature-based solutions and geared toward the public good.

The COVID-19 crisis shows us that it is possible to make transformational changes overnight. We have suddenly entered a different world with a different economy. Governments are rushing to protect their citizens medically and economically in the short term. But there is also a strong business case for using this crisis to usher in global systemic change.

For example, there is no good reason not to be phasing out fossil fuels and deploying renewable energy technologies, most of which are now globally available  and already cheaper than fossil fuels in many cases. With the recent oil-price plunge, perverse fossil-fuel subsidies can and should be eliminated, as the G7 and many European countries have pledged  to do by 2025.

Shifting from industrial to regenerative agriculture also is immediately feasible, and would allow us to sequester carbon  in the soil at a rate that is sufficient to reverse the climate crisis. Moreover, doing so would turn a profit, enhance economic and environmental resilience, create jobs, and improve wellbeing in both rural and urban communities.

Regenerative agriculture features prominently in many of the new economic models that are now being explored by city governments around the world – all of which are based on the principle of living within our planetary boundaries. As one of us (Raworth) argues in advancing her idea of “Doughnut Economics,” the goal should be to create a “safe and just operating space for all of humanity.” In other words, we must work within the planet’s natural limits (the outer boundary of the doughnut) while also ensuring that marginalized communities do not fall behind (into the doughnut hole).

For policymakers responding to the current crisis, the goal should be to support citizens’ livelihoods by investing in renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. Now is the time to start redirecting the $5.2 trillion  spent on fossil-fuel subsidies every year toward green infrastructure, reforestation, and investments in a more circular, shared, regenerative, low-carbon economy.

Humans are resilient and entrepreneurial. We are perfectly capable of beginning again. If we learn from our failings, we can build a brighter future than the one that is currently in store for us. Let us embrace this moment of upheaval as an opportunity to start investing in resilience, shared prosperity, wellbeing, and planetary health. We have long since exceeded our natural limits; it is time to try something new.
* * * * * * *

(Editor’s note: For a more pessimistic view, see Unfortunately, Coronavirus Is Bad News For Ecology In The Long Term.)

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An article by Elizabeth Moses, Beatriz Cardenas, and Jessica Seddon in the blog of the World Resources Institute

International consensus on cross-border environmental issues has been difficult to achieve, but the 40-year-old Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air-Pollution (or LRTAP as it is known to development professionals) has enjoyed great, if largely unsung, success in the fight against air pollution and climate change. The Convention also led to cleaner air and healthier forests, soils, and lakes in North America, and prevented 600,000 premature deaths annually in Europe.

Scooter-riders with face masks in Hanoi, Vietnam

Signed in 1979 by 32 European countries, the United States, and Canada, the agreement initially aimed to tackle acid rain. Over time, it became a model for effective international environmental cooperation, bringing together scientists and policymakers to solve complex transboundary problems. To date, over 51 countries have joined the Convention and a total of 8 protocols or international agreements have been added to address a range of environmental and health problems caused by industrialization, agricultural modernization, and fossil fuel consumption, including ground-level ozone, black carbon, persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals, and particulate matter. These agreements are based on scientific assessment that identifies actions required to improve human health and ecosystems.

The Convention has delivered concrete results. Emissions of particulate matter and sulphur dropped by 30–80% since 1990 in Europe and 30–40% in North America. In Europe, these measures have extended life expectancy by a year. Nitrogen oxide releases have also been halved and lead pollution levels in UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) countries have been reduced by almost 80% between 1990–2012.

What Cities Can Learn from the Convention

This success is especially relevant for cities. With industrialization and population growth, air pollution is worsening in many developing cities, where pollution levels can be 4–14 times higher than World Health Organization air pollutant health guidelines. Because non-urban sources could also be major contributors to urban air pollution, many cities will be unable to reduce air pollution through local action alone. The Convention provides scientific tools, models, data, monitoring methods, guidance documents, and best practices so that cities can holistically address air pollution at the local level.

Policies Supported by Science

Unlike other environmental or climate change conventions, the Convention puts scientists in the same room as policymakers. This structure ensures that collaborative working groups, which include technical and scientific expertise across different fields, are linked to the political negotiation and decision-making process. This two-way engagement allows scientific information based on model outputs to define outcomes. Outcomes may involve reaching an agreement on pollution reduction levels, while also ensuring political negotiations and international political processes provide input on priorities for scientific research.

Ongoing interaction between policy makers and scientists has spurred informal communication, which has built trust and resulted in a common base of scientific research and knowledge. The Convention has been successful at fostering neutral, uncontroversial scientific results that can be used to foster good decision-making. Other conventions should take note and follow its lead.

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Despite the vested interests of companies and governments, Can we make progress toward sustainable development?

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A Multi-Pollutant Approach

The introduction of the critical loads concept, implemented through the use of the RAINS (Regional Acidification Information Simulation) model, helped revolutionize the scientific assessments used to make decisions under the Convention. It was a key reason the Convention was able to move from a substance-to-substance to multi-pollutant strategy used in the Gothenburg Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-Level Ozone.

This concept integrates environmental effects of one or more pollutants with emission source data, atmospheric transportation estimates and abatement cost information. As a result, the Convention has created multiple reduction strategy options that are focused on effects instead of specific emission limits. These strategies enable states to focus on different pollutants at different times, and how they affect multiple environmental problems.

This scientific innovation increased state capacity to develop pollution reductions at lower costs and with more flexibility. It also provided states with optimized plans to use in their negotiations and facilitated the ability to secure political and private sector support for emission reduction strategies.

Flexible Enforcement & Transparent Data

The convention’s executive body approaches noncompliance through facilitation and cooperation. The body offers practical suggestions to accelerate emissions reductions. It also makes emission data reported by each party to the Convention publicly available, including historical trends, benchmarks and the strategies and policies they use.

Parties are required to report emissions and projections annually. Countries that haven’t complied with the convention’s emission targets must explain the reasons and problems they faced with implementation. This transparency and access to data has driven progress, strengthened compliance and reinforced incentives to respond to political demands.

Successful International Environmental Cooperation

Many view the Convention as one of the most successful ways of facilitating international environmental cooperation. The convention involves scientific coordination led by the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP). EMEP collects emission data, measures air and precipitation quality and models atmospheric transport and deposition of air pollutants. These data are used to evaluate the quantity and significance of transboundary fluxes (changes to air pollutant composition and concentrations) and any areas that exceed critical loads and threshold levels.

The Convention’s intergovernmental policy collaboration and coordination has simulated broader action on air pollution, including technical and policy ratification support to Eastern European countries. Convention representatives have also engaged with other international and regional agreements and organizations, such as the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, the Minamata Convention on Mercury, the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, regional seas conventions such as HELCOM and OSPAR and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition around the intersectionality of air pollution and other environmental challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss.

What’s Next?

Considering the success of this agreement, deeper engagement with the Convention Executive Body at the UNECE could help other regions and non-member countries apply these lessons and drive momentum for multi-jurisdictional action. After the Convention’s 40th anniversary, the executive body established a forum for collaboration on reducing air pollution. The goal is that this will promote integrated approaches to address air pollution, aimed at achieving multiple benefits to human health, the economy, ecosystems, and efforts across sectors that improve air quality. 

(Thank you to the Good News Agency for calling this article to our attention>)

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An article from Democracy Now (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License)

The 17-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered a speech Tuesday to the world leaders and global elite gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, one year after she first condemned the forum for its inaction on climate change. “We don’t need a ‘low-carbon economy.’ We don’t need to ‘lower emissions.’ Our emissions have to stop,” Thunberg said. “And until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus, then we must forget about net zero. We need real zero.”

Video of Thunberg speech

AMY GOODMAN: We end today’s show with the words of a 17-year-old: Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. She just turned 17 in the last weeks. She addressed world leaders today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

GRETA THUNBERG: One year ago, I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire. I said I wanted you to panic. I’ve been warned that telling people to panic about the climate crisis is a very dangerous thing to do. But don’t worry. It’s fine. Trust me. I’ve done this before. And I can assure you: It doesn’t lead to anything.

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Despite the vested interests of companies and governments, Can we make progress toward sustainable development?

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And for the record, when we children tell you to panic, we’re not telling you to go on like before. We’re not telling you to rely on technologies that don’t even exist today at scale and that science says perhaps never will. We are not telling you to keep talking about reaching net zero emissions or carbon neutrality by cheating and fiddling around with numbers. We’re not telling you to offset your emissions by just paying someone else to plant trees in places like Africa, while at the same time forests like the Amazon are being slaughtered at an infinitely higher rate. Planting trees is good, of course, but it’s nowhere near enough of what is needed, and it cannot replace real mitigation and rewilding nature.

And let’s be clear: We don’t need a low-carbon economy. We don’t need to lower emissions. Our emissions have to stop, if we are to have a chance to stay below the 1.5-degree target. And until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus, then we must forget about net zero. We need real zero, because distant net-zero emission targets will mean absolutely nothing if we just continue to ignore the carbon dioxide budget that applies for today, not distant future dates. If high emissions continue like now even for a few years, that remaining budget will soon be completely used up.

The fact that the U.S.A. is leaving the Paris accord seemed to outrage and worry everyone. And it should. But the fact that we are all about to fail the commitments you signed up for in the Paris Agreement doesn’t seem to bother the people in power even the least. Any plan or policy of yours that doesn’t include radical emission cuts at the source starting today is completely insufficient for meeting the 1.5- or well below 2-degree commitments of the Paris Agreement.

And again, this is not about right or left. We couldn’t care less about your party politics. From a sustainability perspective, the right, the left, as well as the center, have all failed. No political ideology or economic structure has been able to tackle the climate and environmental emergency and create a cohesive and sustainable world, because that world, in case you haven’t noticed, is currently on fire.

AMY GOODMAN: Seventeen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressing world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She spoke just after President Trump spoke at the gathering, touting the economy but not talking about the climate crisis, which is the focus of the World Economic Forum, the World Economic Forum in Davos. That does it for our show. We’ll post her whole speech online.

(Thank you to Phyllis Kotite, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

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An article by Toby Hill from Green Biz

BlackRock became the latest signatory to Climate Action 100+, adding the substantial weight of its $6.8 trillion in assets under management to the investor engagement initiative that works to ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take action on climate change.

BlackRock joins 370 global investors already signed up to the scheme, bringing total assets under management by those participating to over $41 billion.

As signatories, investors commit to engaging with companies on a range of climate-related fronts. The group typically has called on firms to take bolder steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, implement a strong governance framework for managing climate-related risks and opportunities, and provide enhanced corporate disclosure in line with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).

“BlackRock is one of the largest and most influential asset managers in the world and will bring even more heft to investor engagement through Climate Action 100+,” said Emily Chew, steering committee chair at Climate Action 100+. “We look forward to working with BlackRock to build on the initiative’s success and work to ensure companies take the urgent and necessary action needed in response to the climate crisis.”

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Divestment: is it an effective tool to promote sustainable development?

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BlackRock’s decision to join the group builds on a series of recent statements on the importance of climate action from the influential investment giant.

CEO Larry Fink has highlighted “climate change” and “environmental risks and opportunities” as key engagement priorities in both his 2018  and 2019 letters to CEOs. The firm also  strengthened its proxy voting guidelines (PDF)  regarding climate change in January 2019.

Joining Climate Action 100+ “is a natural progression of the work our investment stewardship team has done,” BlackRock told Bloomberg in an emailed statement. “We believe evidence of the impact of climate risk on investment portfolios is building rapidly and we are accelerating our engagement with companies on this critical issue,” the firm added.

However, the U.S. investment giant also has faced criticism for sometimes failing to take concrete action on climate change when opportunities have presented themselves. Sustainability non-profit Ceres last year ranked BlackRock 43 among 48 asset managers in a green investment league table, finding it had backed just one in 10 climate-related proposals from shareholders. Indeed, in the past the firm has voted against shareholder proposals brought about by ClimateAction 100+ itself. Such inaction led former U.S. Vice President Al Gore to recently accuse the firm of being “full of greenwash.”

Climate finance experts welcomed BlackRock’s decision to join the group while emphasizing that the company had to work effectively with Climate Action 100+ to encourage more companies to develop ambitious climate strategies.

“Given the immediate need for companies, particularly in the fossil fuel heavy energy sector, to produce Paris-consistent transition plans, Blackrock’s support has just come at the right time,” said Carbon Tracker chairman Mark Campanale. “The challenge now is to see a ‘high bar’ on climate disclosure followed, as well as business alignment by fossil fuel companies such as Exxon, on the goals of the Paris agreement. Blackrock needs to lend its voice to the many involved in CA100+ calling for no new investment in expanding fossil fuel production.”

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An article from Common Dreams (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License)

After the COP 25 talks on the Paris climate agreement went into overtime Friday night amid a stalled agreement on wealthy countries’ contributions to greatly reducing climate-warming carbon emissions, civil society groups and climate scientists were shocked by the weak language that emerged from the late-night talks on Saturday.

Activists protesting outside IFEMA, where UN Climate Change Conference COP25 is being held. (Photo: Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The latest text includes an “invitation” for countries to communicate their mid-term and long-term climate plans, and the majority of delegations, which attempted to push countries including the U.S. towards ambitious climate targets, were unable Saturday to sway the U.S. away from language regarding carbon markets.

Nearly 100 civil society organizations on Saturday released a  joint statement  condemning the U.S., Australia, the E.U., and other wealthy countries that emit much of the carbon that’s warming the planet, for insisting on a deal “only for the corporate elites, while damning people and the planet.”

As of Saturday, civil society groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Oil Change International, and Friends of the Earth said, the deal that had been hammered out by the parties included an agenda brought by big polluters “straight to the halls of the U.N.” with the help of countries “historically most responsible for the climate crisis.”

At the behest of fossil fuel corporations, they said, wealthy countries are insisting on using carbon markets to “offset” instead of cut emissions, and  “nature based solutions,” which the civil society groups said is likely a euphemism for “large scale biomass burning, carbon storage technologies, the commodification of the ocean”—which will contribute to deforestation and displace food production.

The U.S. is also reportedly still objecting to provisions that would hold it liable for the destruction the climate crisis has already wreaked in island nations.

The deal as it stands would “condemn those on the frontlines of the climate crisis, while hiding the crimes of polluters,” said the groups. “And it would lead to increased inequality with no increase in ambition, no real emissions reductions, and no pathway to 1.5 [degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.]”

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Sustainable Development Summits of States, What are the results?

Despite the vested interests of companies and governments, Can we make progress toward sustainable development?

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The COP 25 summit approached its end after demonstrators staged sit-ins and other protests, with security officials barring about 200 campaigners from the talks after they staged a sit-in. The demonstrators followed in the footsteps of the global climate strike which have drawn millions in the past year.

“I’ve been attending these climate negotiations since they first started in 1991,” Alden Meyer, director of strategy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the BBC. “But never have I seen the almost total disconnect we’ve seen here at COP25 in Madrid between what the science requires and the people of the world demand, and what the climate negotiations are delivering in terms of meaningful action.”

Other critics on social media wrote that the talks had descended into “disarray,” with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) calling them an “utter failure.”

“This is nothing less than a breakdown in the Paris Agreement. This is not climate leadership, this is a betrayal of humanity and future generations,” tweeted climate scientist Eric Holthaus.

“What’s happening today at COP 25 is a clear and present threat to civilization itself,” Holthaus added. “The Trump administration and its fossil fuel allies around the world have sabotaged the Paris Agreement—the only global treaty we have to fight climate change. This is a betrayal of humanity.”

Catherine Abreu of Climate Action Network Canada was among those who spoke at the People’s Closing Plenary Saturday afternoon, where people from marginalized and frontline groups decried the breakdown of the conference and the real-world consequences it will have.

“For so many people gripped by devastating floods, fires, and storms, time is up,” Abreu said. “And instead of helping them, rich countries hold on to your dollars and hold up loss and damage. Public mobilizations are swamping the streets. The status quo you are working so stubbornly to protect is not working for people or the planet.”
Harjeet Singh, of ActionAid International lambasted wealthy countries including the U.S. for fighting to avoid liability for helping to accelerate the climate crisis.

“Developing countries came to this climate conference with the expectation that the people who have lost their crops to drought, or who have lost their homes to cyclones, will finally get help from the UN system,” said Singh. “Instead, they have faced bullying, arm-twisting and blackmail. Rich countries most responsible for the crisis have refused to provide a single penny of new money to support communities to recover from the devastation caused by increasingly frequent and severe climate disasters.”

The civil society groups’ joint statement noted that in the final hours of the summit, “it is not too late for developing countries to stand strong, to resolutely refuse the agenda of polluters.”

“From the Amazon to the Arctic, our world is on fire,” the statement read. “Allowing expansion of coal, oil and gas production at this moment of history is throwing gasoline on the fire.”

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A blog by Emily Atkin at Heated World

Activists say the Paris agreement will be “on the verge of collapse” if rich countries don’t commit to paying poor countries for devastating climate-related losses.

This is what climate activist Greta Thunberg said . . .

After a three week catamaran journey  across the Atlantic Ocean—and a train ride from Portugal—famed youth climate activist Greta Thunberg arrived in Madrid, Spain on Friday for the United Nations climate change conference known as COP25: the last time nations will come together before the Paris climate agreement is officially implemented in 2020.

Thunberg’s immediate message was one of frustration and urgency.

“We have been striking for over a year, and basically nothing has happened,” she told activists shortly after her arrival, and shortly before leading a march of 500,000 people  through Madrid. “The climate crisis is still being ignored by those in power, and we cannot go on like this.”

There are people who will take Thunberg’s statement as a knock on her own activist movement. But those people willingly misinterpret her intention. Clearly, Thunberg is not saying that the climate strikes haven’t changed public opinion and understanding about climate change.

She’s saying that, despite a sea change in public opinion and understanding about the climate crisis, no one with any true power to change the global emissions trajectory has yet done anything about it. She’s saying that no one with any true power at the U.N. climate talks seems to understand the urgency of this crisis.

And she’s right. As an example, just look at what the United States is doing at COP25.

A proposal to avoid paying for climate impacts on the vulnerable

Last night, a source at the U.N. climate talks sent HEATED a photograph of a proposal being floated by the Trump administration’s diplomatic team. The proposal surrounds the problem of “loss and damage,” which refers to the “unavoidable and irreversible impacts of climate change, where mitigation has failed, and adaptation is not possible.”

I’m not sharing the photograph directly because it contains identifying information about the person who shared it, which would put that person’s job at risk. But here’s what the U.S. proposal on loss and damage says—and fair warning, to anyone who isn’t intricately involved with international climate politics, it reads like complete gibberish:

The decision package from the WIM to serve the COP in addition to the CMA could have the following components:

1. Serves both the CMA and COP as a single-consulted body with a single agenda, in accordance with past COP decisions/Paris Agreement


2. The agreement in paragraph 51 of 1/CP.21 on liability and compensation apples to work of the WIM serving the CMA and the COP


3. All Parties to the Convention (including those that are not Parties to Paris) and eligible to serve on the Excom


4. Annual report by the Excom to the COP and CMA considered jointly by the SBI and SBSTA in a single joint contact group


Fortunately, Harjeet Singh helped translate the document into real person words. Singh is the global lead on climate change for ActionAid, and has been following the U.N. negotiations about how to deal with climate loss and damage for a decade.

With this proposal, Singh said, “The U.S. is now attempting to add further protections for itself and fossil fuel companies against liability claims into the complex web of international climate legislation.”

And if this proposal is adopted at COP25 this week, Singh said, “the countries least responsible for the crisis, but are suffering the most, could stand even less chance of receiving financial support to recover from the devastating impacts of increasingly frequent and severe droughts, flooding and sea level rise.”

How in the world is that what the proposal says?

The U.S. proposal surrounds the WIM—that is, the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. This mechanism was established by the U.N. in 2013, so that rich countries that are most responsible for the climate crisis could help financially support poorer countries already experiencing climate disasters, since those countries hold far less responsibility for the crisis.

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Sustainable Development Summits of States, What are the results?

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The WIM sounds pretty cool, but there’s always been a problem with it. The WIM has never had a finance mechanism —meaning, there’s been no way for rich countries like the U.S. to actually pay into it, because it doesn’t say how much countries like the U.S. should compensate countries for the impacts of global warming.

So that’s one thing countries are trying to figure out at the U.N. climate talks this week: How to fix the WIM so that the most vulnerable people on the planet don’t have to pay for billions—or more likely, trillions—in climate damages they didn’t cause.

The U.S.’s proposal, however, doesn’t attempt to add a financing mechanism to the WIM. Instead, Singh said, “The U.S. is using the opportunity to make changes to the way the WIM is governed, to cover its own back and keep developing countries hit by climate disasters mired in debt and poverty.”

This is making climate justice activists—not to mention people from actual developing countries—very mad.

At a press conference at the U.N. on Monday morning, Singh didn’t cite the U.S. proposal explicitly, but warned that wealthy countries were trying to get out of creating a financing mechanism for the WIM, and therefore avoid the obligation for paying poor countries for the damage they caused.

“If rich countries do not allow this architecture to be created … the Paris agreement is on the verge of collapse before it properly begins next year,” he said.

An unsurprising development

It’s not particularly surprising that the United States government would try to avoid financial responsibility for other countries’ climate damages—nor is the attempt unique to the Trump administration, said Taylor Billings, the press secretary for Corporate Accountability, a group that launches global campaigns on holding fossil fuel companies and other corporations accountable for climate change.

“The U.S. is always trying to get out of its historical responsibility for climate change,” she said.

Indeed, as the New York Times reported last year, industrialized nations including the U.S. have routinely failed on their promises to help poor countries deal with devastating climate effects.

In 2009, they pledged to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 for that purpose. But that money “has been slow to materialize,” the Times reported, “with only $3.5 billion actually committed  out of $10.3 billion pledged to a prominent United Nations program  called the Green Climate Fund.” Both Obama and Trump failed to fulfill pledges, the Times reported—though Trump has been much worse. Not only is he attempting to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement; last year, he straight-up canceled $2 billion in promised climate aid to poor countries.

With this new proposal, Billings said, “The U.S. is trying to torch the Paris agreement on its way out.” Justice for poor and developing nations “is the core of what the Paris agreement should do,” she said. “If the U.S. gets its way, that won’t happen.”

The week ahead

Whether the U.S. proposal on loss and damage will be adopted is anyone’s guess. Obviously, it’s in developed countries’ interest to avoid creating a financing mechanism for the WIM—but developing countries will depend on that mechanism for their survival. Meetings on proposals like this tend to be closed to press, so the outcome will likely depend on whether representatives from developing countries push back strongly enough.

Meanwhile, activists like Thunberg are trying to direct some media attention away from themselves and toward those countries currently experiencing unjust loss and damage from the climate crisis.

“We have noticed there is some media attention,” Thunberg said at a press conference at the U.N. this morning. “And we thought it is our moral duty to use that media attention .. .to lend our voices to those who need to tell their stories.

We are privileged, and our stories have been told many times over and over again. It is not our stories that need to be told and listened to.

It is the others, especially from the Global South and Indigenous communities who need to tell their stories. Because the climate emergency is not just something that will impact us in the future. It is not something that will have an impact on children living today when they grow up. It is already affecting countless people today. People are suffering and dying from it today.

So that’s why we’ve created this event, to hope it will be some kind of platform to share the stories that need to be shared.

Six justice activists shared their stories at the press conference. You can listen to them all by clicking HERE.