Climate Summit nº 27: less fossils, more democracy and a lot of rebellion

I left Paris with hope.

At COP21, the vast majority of the world's nations agreed to collectively address the climate crisis.

Seven years later, the lie reeks of fossil fuels, empty promises, and facelifts.

By 2027-28, when the next IPCC report comes out, we will know the chosen path.

The climate science is crystal clear: we must peak emissions before 2025 to have any chance of safeguarding a not-too-hostile climate.

If we don't, we will diverge into runaway scenarios.

There is no more time.

Enough of self-deception and softening the speech.

Things are not going well.

We risk our own existence.

Let's tell the truth and act boldly.

And if that means risking privileges and comfort, those of us who have them, then so be it.

I have decided to participate

, not to fly to these summits anymore.

They generate opposite feelings in me: on the one hand, the vast majority of the thousands of people who meet there work day and night to stop this threat to civilization.

It is, therefore, a moment to share solutions and fuel our collective courage.

But it's also a circus, with inordinate pollution from hundreds of private planes, and almost more fossil fuel lobbyists than representatives of almost any country.

I have decided to participate online, not to fly to these peaks anymore

In this COP27 the level of

no longer has shame: the sponsorship of one of the largest plastics producers in the world (“COPca-cola”), the brutal repression of the military host state, the abandonment of their climate objectives by many banks and multinationals, realizing that they do not match the constant growth of its profits.

That is the problem: the inequalities generated by a system that concentrates capital.

Billionaires emit more than a million times that of the average person.

There is no exit in the box of growth/inequality/environmental degradation.

In recent months you will surely have seen scientists carry out actions of rebellion (non-violent civil disobedience) such as painting the stairs of Congress in Spain blood red or chaining themselves to the latest model cars in Germany.

Why do such respectable people risk their jobs?

Very simple, because under the current rate of emissions in nine years we will exhaust our carbon budget, that is, the total maximum that we can emit without endangering planetary habitability.

We cannot build any more hydrocarbon infrastructure.

We can't burn anything else.

Enough of “renewable” gas pipelines with the excuse of war or inflation.

The exit goes the other way.

Let's say enough and we'll change course.

And that happens to risk.

I have changed my tone in this article.

If you are reading it, it means that the journalist has done her part too.

Let each one move her chips professionally and personally;

calculating how far you can go in those fine balances that living within this system implies, but intelligently inhabiting its cracks, like green grass that cracks the gray cement.

With our vote, our purchases, with those uncomfortable conversations with loved ones.

Taking to the streets to demand action and climate justice, which is the same as public health, pensions and decent wages, or humane reception of migrants (many already are due to the unfair climate devastation).

It is about changing the entire system, and us along the way.

Faced with the absence of a future, youth have risen up with as much fear as courage and truth

There is no healthy planet without healthy democracy.

We need more and better democracy.

The method is everything.

Representative (neo)liberal democracies, swallowed up by big capital, drift towards authoritarianism.

On the globalization chessboard, where governments sit with lobbyists, the game is lost.

Perhaps even national sovereignty itself is incompatible with a lasting management of the commons, as the response to the pandemic made us understand.

And the UN has been doing this since 1995, with emissions rising dramatically.

It is a dismal failure.

Multilateralism yes, but not like that.

We must change everything: from the way of communicating and mobilizing, to governance.

In these 14 years following the climate crisis almost daily, the negative news is overwhelming, but two possibilities give me exciting hope: the rebellion and the citizen assemblies.

Faced with the absence of a future, youth have risen up with as much fear as courage and truth.

“We don't want to be the last generation”, affirmed a young colleague from the network of ambassadors of the European Climate Pact with conviction.

Tears of anger, joy and commitment were falling from my eyes.

You will not be, we will ride by your side to the new world.

The most active works, it takes days or centuries.

When John Kerry says that the US is ready to talk about “loss and damage”, it is not by chance.

Thousands of people have spent years demanding reparation for the irreversible damage that the climate tragedy is causing to the most vulnerable communities, hardly guilty.

Kerry simply echoes all those tireless voices that have brought the issue of the margins to the center.

Hundreds of photos of climate disasters that young African women post on Twitter alongside climate justice banners come to mind.

I retweet them so that their voice can reach.

And arrives.

“Even when the stone is already at the bottom of the lake, the ripples of change continue to spread,” whispers Rebecca Solnit.

On the waves of this beautiful rebellion for life, the desire for direct democracy emerges strongly.

The so-called citizen assemblies for the climate are constituted and expanded.

The first version of the Spanish one has already taken place this year,

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Its 172 recommendations, and especially the process itself, build a bridge to a different future.

After COP27, at the National Environmental Congress (CONAMA), the ambassadors of the Pact will meet some spokespersons and scientific advisers from the Assembly.

While the fossil torches go out, we rebel hearts light up.

We will tell you.

With love.

Jesús Iglesias Saugar

is ambassador of the European Climate Pact at SBNCLIMA.

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