The dueling sirens of police escorts shuttling VIPs around Katowice, Poland, reached a crescendo during the second week of the 2018 United Nations climate conference, as high-level ministers from around the world arrived in the Polish city to finalize the details of the Paris Agreement rulebook—the set of guidelines that countries will use to realize the promises they made three years ago in Paris. With just days to go before the deadline, and dozens of details yet to be worked out, a procession of foreign ministers and U.N. officials took to the plenary stage on Friday at COP24 to urge countries toward more meaningful action.
The U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres flew back to Poland twice this week to warn negotiators that a failure here "would not only be immoral, it would be suicidal." Frank Bainimarama, Fiji's prime minister, called on countries to act or "enter history as the generation that blew it, that sacrificed the health of our world and ultimately betrayed humanity because we didn't have the courage and foresight to go beyond our short-term individual concerns."
One observer summed up the speeches as "quite a lot of theater with little impact on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere," a sentiment that could apply just as easilyto the COP proceedings more broadly. By the end of week two, many issues remained unresolved—much to the chagrin of climate activists and observers.
[For more on this story by KATE WHEELING, go to https://psmag.com/environment/...ons-for-human-rights]
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