Obama blasts China, Russia for shunning COP26
Former US president says major emitters are playing politics with climate change as activists accuse Australia of pandering to fossil fuel industries.
World leaders are preparing to issue a final text from the COP26 climate change conference without mentioning fossil fuels, with activists blaming Australia and other countries with dominant fossil fuel industries.
It came as former United States president Barack Obama told COP26 delegates on Monday that world leaders and US Republicans were all playing politics with climate change.
Mr Obama blasted Russia and China for being absent from the climate summit.
“I have to confess it was particularly discouraging to see the leaders of two of the world’s largest emitters, China and Russia, declined to even attend the proceedings,” Mr Obama said to a packed audience, before adding: “Their national plans so far reflect what appears to be a dangerous lack of urgency or willingness to maintain the status quo on the part of those governments and that’s a shame.”
Mr Obama said international co-operation on global warming had atrophied: in part because of the pandemic, in part because of the rise of nationalism and tribal impulses around the world but also “in part because of a lack of leadership on America’s part for four years on a host of multilateral issues”.
Mr Obama also called on climate protesters to build coalitions for “bold action” to persuade people who did not agree or were indifferent.
Activists said the COP26 final text, which is still to be thrashed out in the coming days before being released on Friday, initially showed that powerful countries – including Australia – may have succeeded in blocking any reference to the oil, gas or coal industries. This was despite major pledges being made by various countries to end coal financing and reduce carbon emissions by embracing renewable energy sources and hydrogen at the expense of fossil fuel industries.
The aim before the summit was to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and to obtain funding promises of $US100bn a year to help poorer countries deal with the impacts of climate change.
Greenpeace, which has obtained the draft copy of the final text that was written after the first week of the summit, said it was just 850 words long and failed to acknowledge that fossil fuels were driving the climate crisis. Nor did the final text make any commitment to tangible actions to end global reliance on coal, oil and gas.
Greenpeace said negotiators had to stand up to fossil fuel-producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Australia, saying the two countries “have blocked fossil fuel reduction even being mentioned in the last 25 COP texts and are crippling ambition in the negotiations at Glasgow”.
Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said every time fossil fuels were mentioned, it had been blocked by the same countries.
“What’s very concerning here in Glasgow is that the first draft of the climate pact text is already exceptionally weak. Usually the text starts with some ambition, which then gets watered down,” she said.
“To keep 1.5 alive, four words must be added – ‘fossil fuels phase out’ – and countries must come back next year to close the gap.”
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