It was heartbreaking to watch the final hours of COP 26. Robin Sears writes:
Whether you were appalled or simply resigned at the sight of India’s successful last minute power play to water down the commitment to phase out coal, it was high drama to watch it unfold. Minutes before the final concession, Reuters reported that China, India, the U.S. and the EU were huddling just off the floor. China pushed India to demand with them the “soft on coal” language, threatening not to sign the pact if they were refused.
These meetings always end the same way. Each time a breakthrough is in sight, one or two nations threaten to sabotage the whole meeting and a compromised in reached -- compromise that brngs us closer to the cliff:
There is no forum in the world like it. This is a decision-making body, made of up of nearly every nation on earth. The world has never succeeded at something this ambitious — and we have often failed. The League of Nations, collapsed; the UN, paralyzed by big power veto; the WTO, at risk of irrelevance.
At COP there is little hierarchy of power. The Maldives delegate, a powerful and impassioned campaigner, has the same access to the world’s attention as the U.S. It operates by consensus, so the major powers need to fight for Tuvalu’s support, not just that of their peers. Of course, there are side deals and hidden coalitions; everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others.
Foot draggers like Australia, China, India and Indonesia came under real political pressure inside and — more importantly — outside the hall. One could sense for the first time a sense of near panic about island nations’ survival, about extreme weather becoming more severe for everyone.
Watching John Kerry weave back and forth between groups, pleading for consensus; listening to the impassioned Africans telling the world of their climate suffering; witnessing the pain on the faces of the poorer nations’ delegates at the hard compromises they must swallow — you knew this was for real. As Kerry put it, very few public officials get to make decisions of this magnitude, choices about the very fate of the world.
Getting the countries of the world to act in unison has always been a fool's errand. And time is running out.
Image: shutterstock
