It has only been a week since the climate summit in Dubai and the first criticisms and complaints from several environmental organizations against the decisions that have not been long in coming.
Ecologistas en Acción has denounced that the draft Global Balance Sheet (GST), approved after the first week of COP28, includes “dangerous considerations and false solutions” such as carbon capture and storage and the intention of several countries to continue betting on nuclear energy.
In a press release, said organization assures that although the summit includes several mentions of the need to put an end to fossil fuels, to accelerate the installation of renewable energies or to double energy efficiency, there are many countries that continue to block these incorporations. . Furthermore, environmentalists have harshly criticized both the US and France for their intention to continue betting on “enormously expensive, dirty and dangerous energies, such as nuclear energy.”
Continuing along the same lines, the NGO Friends of the Earth has denounced the “strong blockages in the negotiations to prevent the inclusion of basic principles on climate justice, by countries such as the US or the EU, among others”, which They cause the lack of a firm commitment to the elimination of fossil fuels.
In this sense, the Friends of the Earth press release points out that for climate action to be effective, the objectives of eliminating fossil fuels and renewable energy must go hand in hand, so that renewable energy replaces fossil fuels. declining rather than joining them.
“Agreements such as tripling global renewable energy without a global commitment to eliminate fossil fuels make no sense, since they place us in an unrealistic scenario with a production greater than what the biophysical limits of the planet can tolerate,” say Friends of the Land.
Furthermore, Ecologistas en Acción highlights, from its point of view, the inability of countries to advance in the global adaptation goal, in creating the mitigation work program and, above all, in designing the new financing objective.
Both organizations consider that to confront the climate emergency, the creation of fair and predictable financing is necessary. In addition, they demand the abolition of debt, a historical demand of the countries of the global South before the countries of the North, historically responsible for emissions.
“From Friends of the Earth we call for the prevailing need to ensure public and additional financing so that the countries of the South can carry out an energy transition in a fair and sustainable way.” Emphasizes the person responsible for Climate Justice of the organization, Cristina Alonso.
Finally, they have also complained about the presence of fossil industry lobbies that are constantly pushing to carry out measures that are far from climate justice and to evade all responsibility.
