Title:Stepping Up Our Climate Diplomacy.

• Author: Ray, Charles

Text:

At the opening of the COP27 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on November 7, 2022, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the representatives of the countries attending that they faced a choice: work together to cut greenhouse gas emissions or condemn the planet to climate catastrophe. "Humanity has a choice," Guterres said. "Cooperate or perish. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator."

Guterres called for the world's richest and poorest countries to work together to speed up the transition from fossil fuels, and for the wealthy to help with funding to enable poor countries reduce emissions and deal with the negative impacts that they have already suffered due to climate change.

"The two largest economies--the United States and China--have a particular responsibility to join efforts to make this pact a reality," he went on to say. Left unsaid, but understood by most, is that China and the U.S. are also the world's two largest emitters of greenhouse gases.

While the U.S. and much of the rest of the world are still preoccupied with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, rampant inflation, energy shortages, and the fallout from the Covid pandemic, the existential problem of climate change cannot be ignored.

Funding for Vulnerable Countries

COP27 began with an agreement by the nearly 200 countries participating to discuss compensating the poor nations for damage linked to climate change, the first time this controversial topic has been included on the agenda since the talks began decades ago. After consistently opposing this measure, on the last day of COP27, the U.S. signed on to a breakthrough agreement to provide 'loss and damage' funding for vulnerable countries hit hard by climate disasters. The agreement established a 'transitional committee' to make recommendations on how to 'operationalize' both the new funding arrangements and the fund at COP28 next year. The committee is expected to hold its first meeting before the end of March 2023. It remains to be seen, though, whether the summit will produce actionable outcomes and whether countries will follow through with concrete actions. Despite the optimism generated by the agreement, many are doubtful that the fund will actually reduce net emissions, and point out that the deal does not address the growing gap between climate science and climate policy.

While all the world's crises are important and must be addressed, without cuts to greenhouse gas emissions this decade, scientists warn that it will be impossible to avoid a global temperature rise of more than 1.5 degrees C.

In my opinion, the climate crisis is the greatest crisis of this century and one that the U.S. should make a central part of our foreign policy. The Biden administration acknowledged this by appointing former Secretary of State John Kerry as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, but progress has been slow.

As the...