United Nations (UN) Secretary General Antonio Guterres aptly stated that “we are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator,” during his speech at the COP27 summit. But instead of taking a vow to save our planet from destruction and work hand in hand with other nations at this hour of crisis, many nations are still indulging in a partisan approach without acknowledging the simple fact that no matter how much wealthier they are, they will also be severely impacted alongside other nations of the world. Some nations are attempting to shift the entire blame on poor and developing nations for excessive emissions of greenhouse gases. They demand that developing nations need to spend more to keep the rise of temperatures under control than developed nations. The blame game is a major contributor as to why no positive outcome has emerged from the said meet barring one early warning plan, which is envisaged to provide warnings against natural disasters worldwide. This will allow the nations under threat to take timely action to save lives and property. The early working system may become functional if $ 3.1 billion is invested between 2023 and 2027. But there is still a question mark on the availability of the funds to make the warning system operational.
It appears that the world has not learnt a single lesson from the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed thousands of lives all over the world, not withstanding the devastation caused to the world’s economy, which will take years to heal. The most important lesson of the pandemic is that nobody is safe, until everybody is safe. Rich nations deliberately ignored the lesson and decided against helping poor nations with vaccines and required medical expertise even at the height of the pandemic. They are doing the same in the case of global warming. It must be noted that the US had earlier walked out of the Paris Agreement alleging that the nation would have to bear most of the expenses. It is a great relief that the present US regime has reverted the decision. But the question remains as to whether the US, the wealthiest nation in the world is playing a proactive role in saving the world from climate disaster. Many environmentalists argue that the US has been found lacking in the effort to ward off the threat of global warming. Clearly, time is running out. If all nations cannot come together to fight the climate menace, the future of Earth is very bleak indeed. Instead of debating spending budgets to tackle the impending danger a joint fund should be created under the aegis of the UN with generous contributions from all nations to negate the threat of global warming. Togetherness is the foremost prerequisite to combat the climate menace.
