Global climate challenge

United Nations climate talks (COP29) that began in Baku, Azerbaijan, today is an annual gathering of the 197 countries that have agreed to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  Heads of state and diplomats from nearly 200 countries are meeting to try to chart a path forward to address the climate crisis. Incidentally, the meeting has followed just days after the victory of Donald Trump who has publicly dismissed climate change as a “hoax.”  However, as the successive extreme weather events unfolding across the world underline, climate change is for real. This year is already billed to be one of the hottest years on record. In Kashmir, we are now familiar with heatwaves. If anything, the successive extreme events give a grim glimpse of the future. We are fast hurtling towards irreversible tipping points, for example in global temperature rise.

However, the challenge for the world is to update the climate plan and commit the necessary resources to make it a reality.  And this requires trillions of dollars. For a plan to make a real redeeming difference on the ground, the world needs to shift to clean energy systems, and move transportation systems away from fossil fuels. It also needs the countries to act in concert, with rich countries shelling out money to compensate for the poor countries. This is easier said than done. Climate finance is not easy to arrange and the rich countries who are responsible for much of the world’s climate crisis aren't willing to put their money where their mouth is.

However, one major benefit of the annual gatherings like COP29 is that they have helped put climate change at the centre of the  global discourse. With Trump, a denier of climate change, at the helm in the US, the urgent global action to fight climate change may get harder. During Trump’s first term in power, the US withdrew from the Paris Agreement, stopping, as a result, championing the climate cause. This had a chilling effect on global climate discourse. He could do so again. However, the unfolding extreme weather events, including in the US, hardly leaves an option to ignore climate change, including for the  Trump administration. The need of the hour is an urgent global action on climate spearheaded by the powerful countries who essentially are responsible for wrecking the global climate.