AFP is now reporting that the gridlocked UN climate talks will head into overtime. UN climate talks have been extended by a day in an effort to break deadlock as nations tussle over funding for developing countries battered by weather disasters and ambition on curbing global warming.
Wealthy and developing nations were struggling to find common ground on creating the fund, and on a host of other crucial issues, with only hours before the summit was scheduled to end in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who chairs the COP27 talks, told delegates that the negotiations would spill into Saturday, a delay not unusual in such sprawling UN climate talks. “I remain concerned at the number of outstanding issues,” he said.
Annual electric car sales are on track to exceed 10m in 2022, up more than 60% year on year and more than triple the 3.1m sold in 2020. More than 13% of new cars sold globally in the first half of 2022 were electric, up from 8.7% in 2021, and 4.3% in 2020.
Electric vehicle use in 2022 will avoid the burning of 1.7m barrels of oil per day – more than the total oil consumption of France or Mexico, both G20 economies.
This exponential growth suggests a tipping point is being passed, leading to the runaway adoption of electric cars. They are cheaper to own overall than petrol or diesel cars and within a few years will cost less to buy as well, supercharging their growth.
Young activists have finished a Friday climate strike marking the last formal day, marching down one of the pavilions outside the centres where negotiations are still taking place holding banners with slogans including “Don’t just say it, pay it!”
For the first time youth organisations including Fridays for Future, Youngo, Polluters Out, Latina for Climate and Start:Empowerment have issued a joint closing demand on loss and reparations.
“The division between the two sides has been clear; the highest polluters have continued to block and delay the bare minimum funding through poor climate finance mechanisms such as the global shield,” said Fatemah Sultan, from Fridays for Future Pakistan. “Coming from a country like mine, Pakistan, which does not even emit 1% of global emissions, we are not here talking about the loss and damages of tomorrow, we are talking about the ones from my yesterday, my today and my tomorrow.”
South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, has been hit by catastrophic floods for the fourth year in a row. Assistant High Commissioner for Operations at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, Raouf Mazou today urged the international community to step up sustained support to provide South Sudan with climate-adapted development assistance to help it move away from dependency on humanitarian aid.
Care International points out that: “Since mid-October, one million people have been displaced, as the fourth consecutive year of flooding ravages the country. Some people who fled from their villages due to floods in 2019 are yet to return to their homes which were destroyed. Over 37,000 tons of crops have been destroyed and 800,000 cattle have been killed by flood waters. In Rubkona County, more than 140,000 people have had to leave their homes due to rising waters. They remain cut off with the only way of reaching them being canoes.”
For years, scientists have been warning that the Amazon is speeding toward a tipping point — the moment when deforestation and global warming would trigger an irreversible cascade of climatic forces, killing large swaths of what remained. If somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of the forest were lost, models suggested, much of the Amazon would perish.