What happened at Cop27 on day five?
That’s it from us for today, but we’ll be back liveblogging tomorrow, which is food and agriculture day.
Summary:
US president Joe Biden addressed the conference, asking world leaders to “do more”.
He used the speech to unveil a number of new measures, including a plan to slash emissions of methane in the US, support new early warning systems for extreme weather disasters in Africa, and a deal to back new solar and wind projects in Egypt in return for the country decommissioning gas power plants and cutting its emissions.
The speech was briefly interrupted by youth and Indigenous activists from the US, calling on Biden to stop pushing fossil fuel extraction.
Grant Shapps, the UK business secretary, said that the UK would continue to use and develop North Sea oil and gas as long as it generated lower carbon dioxide emissions than that created by importing gas from overseas.
US House speaker Nancy Pelosi told Cop27: “We have left incrementalism in the dust, this is about transformation.” She said she hoped Cop27 would “help save the world for the children”.
Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub said people who call for the end of the oil and gas industry “have no clue what that would mean” and refused to say whether she accepted her company’s role in climate disasters.
An analysis of delegates found that there had been an “explosion” in fossil fuel lobbyists attending the climate summit this year, with 636 in attendance, a rise of more than 25% since Cop26 in Glasgow.
Gas producers and their financial backers have been accused of using Cop27 as an opportunity to rebrand natural gas as a transition fuel rather than a fossil fuel.
Medics from across the world have just staged a protest to highlight how climate carnage is killing their patients, including performing CPR on an inflatable globe.
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As Joe Biden drops into the Cop27 climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Mohamed Adow, Director of Power Shift Africa, said:
“Joe Biden comes to Cop27 and makes new promises but his old promises have not even been fulfilled. I’d rather have one apple in my hand than the promise of five that never come. Biden is throwing crumbs into lots of different pots. That might sound impressive but it’s not the help that is needed. We need straightforward funding that directly goes to communities and countries.
“He is like a salesman selling goods with endless small print. Proper support comes in short words that are easily understandable, not a long list of caveats and explanations about which bizarre scheme they are throwing some scraps into.”
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After six years as the big cheese of UN climate negotiations, Patricia Espinosa has been enjoying walking the halls of power, not quite as an ordinary Joe, and apparently not following the negotiations too closely. “It has felt just amazing. I knew that as the [UNFCCC] executive secretary that I was missing so much, and it’s been a really wonderful experience.”
Espinosa may not be paying close attention, but we’re starting to see developed countries push back against this year’s hot topic, loss and damage, after developing nations laid out a unified case for why a funding mechanism separate to climate adaptation and mitigation was needed to address the climate catastrophes that can’t be averted. The US in particular has been accused of being a “bad faith actor” due to its long track record of disrupting and delaying progress on the issue.
“Yes I can understand why people are saying that. Their reluctance on having an agenda item on loss and damage, and the fact that we are only now starting to really seriously talk about it is really very surprising, because the losses and damages have been there for all these years.”
But while developing countries and climate justice activists want a firm pledge to create a loss and damage mechanism at Cop27, Espinosa thinks we’re not there yet. “It is possible that there is a need to have some more conversations about what we mean by loss and damage and what we want to address.”
Last but not least, some argue that once again we’re seeing developed nations focused on loans rather than grants for developing countries. “That’s absolutely not fair. The issue of finance is really at the centre of the process and the fact that the pledge for mobilising $100bn has not been delivered is really very disappointing. It is very clear that the international financial system is not responding to the current needs of the world, especially of the most vulnerable countries that are bearing a lot of the costs. So that has to change.”
By the way, Espinosa makes an appearance in the film released by the Guardian this week, with our colleague Fiona Harvey looking at the way forward. Check it out.
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You can watch Joe Biden’s speech here:
Protesters interrupt the US president's speech
Four protesters holding a banner which read ‘people vs fossils’ interrupted the speech of Joe Biden, the US president, to Cop27.
The protesters were youth and Indigenous activists from the US, and they were calling on Biden to stop pushing fossil fuel extraction. They spoke with the Guardian shortly after being escorted out of the plenary hall by security staff.
“The president, members of Congress and the state department have come to this international forum on climate change proposing false solutions that will not get us to 1.5C,” said Big Wind, 29, a member of the Northern Arapaho tribe in Wyoming.
Youth and Indigenous activists from the US interrupted Joe Biden to demand that he stop pushing fossil fuel extraction pic.twitter.com/nGuvxr22oo
— Nina Lakhani (@ninalakhani) November 11, 2022
“We need to accelerate the transition but that’s not going to happen by partnering with big polluters like Amazon and PepsiCo, and so we needed to call that out,” he said, in reference to an announcement earlier this week by US climate envoy John Kerry, the Bezos Earth Fund, PepsiCo and others about plans to design an energy transition accelerator.
Biden referenced Indigenous peoples in his speech, yet has failed to leverage his power to support them directly through direct access to funds needed by communities to adapt to the climate crisis, said Big Wind.
Jamie Wefald, a 24-year-old climate activist from Brooklyn, New York, said: “Joe Biden is promoting false solutions to the climate crisis, he is no climate hero. We wanted to create a moment on behalf of all frontline communities in the global north and south to demand real climate solutions.”
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Also in Sharm el-Sheikh briefly this week was James Cartlidge, the UK’s exchequer secretary to the Treasury. He defended the government’s record on climate finance, and said the “pause” in debt repayments that the UK was working to bring about would be a major help to some of the worst afflicted countries.
“These are countries really in the firing line of the climate emergency, that need to focus all their resources on rebuilding their country [to cope with the impact of extreme weather]. It would be ideal if their debt could be paused so that they can focus on dealing with the climate emergency,” he said. “This is really important, from a UK point of view.”
He said the UK was looking at ways to extend this debt suspension to as many countries as possible that need it.
He reiterated the UK’s commitment to £11.6bn of climate finance for developing countries, of which £4.5bn would be focused on helping poor countries adapt to the impact of extreme weather, by 2025. “There needs to be a real focus on adaptation,” he said.
The UK was also a contributor to the just energy transition partnership in South Africa, he noted, where people working in the coal industry are being helped to move to working in the expansion of renewable energy. The UK is the largest contributor to the partnership, with a commitment of about £1.8bn.
“That’s the sort of policy we are going to need in the future,” he said. “Countries need to make that transition to green energy. We need to scale up support for existing workforces in fossil fuels. The feedback on the partnership at this Cop has been very positive.”
The just energy transition partnership in South Africa was a key achievement of Cop26, hosted by the UK in Glasgow last November, he said.
“It’s very important that the UK has been driving this effort. The prime minister is really passionate about making the UK a key country for green finance,” he said.
“It’s a really important message I want to give, that net zero offers a national opportunity for growth and investment. The UK can be number one in green finance, green investment and green technology.”
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Earlier today, Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub claimed that Al Gore “tells me not to build direct air capture” to take greenhouse gases out of the air.
We checked the claim with the former US vice president, who said it was incorrect.
In a statement, Gore said: “That is 100% incorrect. I have told her and other fossil fuel CEOs to stop misleading the public into thinking that an early-stage, prohibitively expensive technology somehow mitigates their reckless practice of spewing heat-trapping pollution into the sky as if it were an open sewer.
“Experimenting with the possibility that DAC may eventually play a meaningful role is responsible and I support it. But unrealistic and deceptive claims that it can serve as an excuse to continue destroying humanity’s future is dangerously irresponsible.”
My colleague Nina Lakhani managed to get some footage of the small group of protesters who interrupted Biden.
The banner they are holding up seems to read “People vs Fossil fuels”. Contrary to our earlier reporting, they don’t seem to be led out of the hall, but simply resume their seats.
Youth and Indigenous activists from the US interrupted Joe Biden to demand that he stop pushing fossil fuel extraction pic.twitter.com/nGuvxr22oo
— Nina Lakhani (@ninalakhani) November 11, 2022
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Cherelle Blazer of the Sierra Club, the US’s oldest grassroots environment organisation, welcomed his speech and particularly the section on methane.
She said: “In addition to the success of the Inflation Reduction Act and the ratification of the Kyoto protocol, we’re encouraged by the Biden administration announcing this long-awaited methane rule and critically needed federal contractor emissions guidelines, both of which, if implemented justly, are an important part of the United States being able to reach its climate goals.
“These rules must not be the end of progress but rather a continuation of the work that will be built upon in the coming months and years.”
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Tim Benton, director of the environment and society programme at Chatham House, welcomed some focus on the global food system, which is fragile and in urgent need of transformational change.
“Biden’s initiative has some good investments, that whilst welcome – and every little helps – are a drop in the ocean of requirements. Investments in climate-smart agriculture are always a good idea, but we need to focus on transforming food systems to deliver better outcomes for nutrition, health and biodiversity, not in scaling up ‘industrial scale’ agriculture to make it resilient to heatwaves and droughts alone. The issue of methane from agriculture seems conspicuously absent still from the methane pledges. As agricultural emissions of methane are the same scale of emissions from fuel production, it remains an omission.”
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Meanwhile Bernice Lee, research director for futures, at Chatham House think tank, is focussed on the US-China relationship.
She told the Guardian: “All eyes are on Biden to fulfil the US’s finance promises. It is an open wound that the US will keep rubbing salt into unless it is done and delivered.
“It is also time to harness the US-China geopolitical dynamics into climate delivery. Let the race for low carbon solutions and models begin in earnest … the hope is that Biden and Xi will not only play to the domestic audiences but also the world’s climate-converted citizens. The key is for the two sides to keep channels for climate cooperation open despite the toxic atmospherics.”
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Reaction to Biden’s speech is varied.
Daisy Dunne, at Carbon Brief, has pointed out that there was no reference to the issue of loss and damage in Biden’s speech, despite it being one of the hot topics at the conference.
No mention of #LossAndDamage in Biden's special address to #COP27...
— Daisy Dunne (@daisydunnesci) November 11, 2022
...although he did mention US supports the Global Shield project, which other countries have spoken about in the context of loss and damage funding
(see this thread by @Josh_Gabbatiss) https://t.co/3p3deqgMKp
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Biden is winding up now. “Let’s reach out and take the future in our hands. A planet preserved, a more equitable, prosperous world for our children, that is why we are here, that is what we are working towards. I’m confident we can do it. Thank you, and may God bless you all.”
And then he heads off stage, to warm applause.
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He pays tribute to the young people who campaign on this. “Young people feel the urgency of the climate crisis and feel it deeply. They won’t allow us to fail.”
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There’s a loud whooping in the hall, and Biden pauses briefly. Then some people are led out. He resumes his speech.
“If we are to win this fight, we can no longer plead ignorance to consequence of actions and repeat our mistakes,” Biden tells Cop27.
“If we can accelerate actions on these gamechangers, we can reach our goal. But to permanently bend [the] emissions curve, every nation must step up. The US has acted, everyone has to act, it’s a duty and responsibility of global leadership.”
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He is speaking now about the natural world and land use. “Forests are more valuable when they are preserved then when they are destroyed.” He calls for a slowdown in deforestation.
He is also talking about shipping.
“Folks, it’s going to take all of us.”
He talks about the urgent need to reduce methane. “Cutting methane by at least 30% by 2030 can be our best chance to keep in reach of the 1.5C target.”
Biden says there will now be new regulations on methane in US. “All told these steps will reduce US methane emissions from cover sources by 87% below 2005 levels by 2030.”
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“I know this has been a difficult few years,” says Biden. “The interconnected challenges we face seem all consuming.” He blames Russia for energy spikes and costs. “Against this backdrop it’s more important than ever to double down on our climate commitments.”
He urges the audience: “Let’s build on global climate progress. The science is devastatingly clear, we need to make vital progress by the end of this decade.”
“We’re going to fight to see our climate objectives are fully funded,” says Biden.
He is now announcing new support of $100m for adaptation. There will be support for early warning systems in Africa, for strengthening food security and supporting a new training centre in Egypt to transition to renewables across the continent.
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Biden is now reflecting on his own long journey of trying to get climate legislation passed.
“I introduced [the] first piece of climate legislation to US Senate in 1986, and my commitment to this issue has been unwavering. Today, I can stand as president of US and can say with confidence we will meet our emission reduction targets by 2030.”
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“This will unleash a new era of clean energy and economic growth,” says Biden. “It’s going to spark a cycle of innovation to improve performance of clean energy technology that will be available to nations worldwide, not just in the US. It will accelerate decarbonisation beyond our borders. It will shift the paradigm from the US to the rest of the world.”
He notes the support for the Kigali agreement, to more applause.
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He says: “We rejoined the Paris climate agreement,” to warm applause. “I apologise we ever pulled out of the agreement!”
He is listing some of the environmental achievements in the US since he took office. “After the past two years the US has delivered unprecedented progress at home, upgraded power grid, expanding public transit and rail, building EV charging stations.
“And this summer the US congress passed the biggest and most important climate bill in the history of our country, the inflation reduction act.”
There is huge applause at this point.
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He is now discussing the impacts of climate change which have been felt all over the world.
“The climate crisis is about human security, economic security, environmental security, national secuerity and the very life of the planet.
“Today I’d like to share with you how the US is meeting the challenge of the climate crisis.”
Biden notes that it is veteran’s day, and mentions his climate envoy John Kerry.
“John Kerry has been critical in delivering progress on climate change. Thank you, pal.”
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The president is now speaking. “Thank you, thank you thank you,” he says to polite applause, then thanking the Egyptian president El Sisi “for bringing us toegther at this pivotal moment”.
Still waiting…
Someone just came on the stage, adjusted the lectern – which has a presidential seal on it – and then walked off again, to the laughter of the crowd.
The speech will be taking place in Nefertiti hall, one of the largest in the conference centre.
It’s currently extremely full, says my colleague Oliver Milman, with people waiting two hours before Biden was due to begin speaking. People are chatting quietly.
The security, unsurprisingly, has been tight. There are now rows of cameras pointed at the stage, waiting for Biden to make his entrance.
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Joe Biden about to take the stage at Cop27
Joe Biden is set to take the stage at Cop27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, where it’s expected he will laud the US’ recent action on the climate crisis and call upon other countries to do more to avert dangerous global heating.
The US president missed the gathering of other world leaders at the start of the climate talks due to the midterm elections back home, which have gone better than expected for the Democrats.
Buoyed by this, Biden is expected to reiterate that America is back to leading on climate again after the Donald Trump years, and is set to unveil a number of new measures, including new regulations aimed at cutting methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Biden’s actions have been welcomed by environmental groups, although developing countries have criticized the ongoing lack of climate funding from the US, which is yet to fulfil promises to aid nations most at risk from disastrous heatwaves, floods and droughts. The issue of ‘loss and damage’, or a form of compensation paid by wealthy countries for climate harms, has been a high profile and thorny one at Cop27.
There is still nearly an hour to go before Biden speaks, but my colleague Oliver Milman, who is in the hall waiting to hear him, says it’s already pretty much full.
Grant Shapps, the UK business secretary, spoke to the Guardian at Cop27 in Egypt this week, saying that the UK would continue to use and develop North Sea oil and gas as long as it generated lower carbon dioxide emissions than importing gas from overseas.
“I don’t want to be licensing dirty fuels,” he said. “I want to be licensing clean offshore wind, and I’m very keen on getting nuclear going again. But I have to look at the overall energy mix and keep the lights on.”
“Whatever we end up doing, I give you this pledge: I will make sure the route we take will be for decarbonising, whatever those options would have to be.”
He said using North Sea resources was better than “importing dirty fuel from elsewhere”, referring to the additional greenhouse gas emissions generated by liquefying natural gas and transporting it overseas by ship. Some methods of gas extraction can tend to leak methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, which adds to its carbon footprint.
Shapps, who has long championed green issues, said the UK needed to look to gas because of the global energy crisis. “We know that because of Vladimir Putin’s war, we have ended up in a situation where the world is desperately trying to rebalance energy sources. That energy has to come from somewhere.”
Fossil fuels were still needed, he said, but the UK was less affected than neighbours such as Germany, which have been highly reliant on imports of gas from Russia. “The UK is luckier than some other European countries, as we were not buying too much from Russia,” he said. “But that has not changed the fact that the price of energy has skyrocketed.”
Asked by the Guardian whether he would grant a licence to a mooted new coalmine in Cumbria, Shapps – who was appointed to the post by Rishi Sunak, replacing Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was business secretary under Liz Truss – said he had not yet looked at the issue.
A decision on the mine was due in July, but the government was in turmoil. It was put off to early this month, but delayed again – perhaps, some speculated, because the government did not want to grant the licence during the Cop27 summit. The UK holds a particularly important position at this Cop, as it hosted Cop26 in Glasgow and earlier this week handed over the presidency of the global talks to Egypt.
Shapps also announced a new initiative called the “breakthrough agenda” at the talks. Under the initative, governments responsible for more than half of the global GDP launched a series of targets and measures to reduce carbon emissions from sectors including energy, road transport, steel and farming.
Shapps said the initiative would lead to the creation of tens of millions of green jobs around the world.
“I know the single best way to bring a proposal to business and industry is to talk about jobs. This is a wonderful example of that – we are going to get countries to participate with green jobs. Up to 70m more jobs by 2030,” he said. “We have to sell it through jobs. We have to normalise the transition [to a low-carbon economy]. And we have to show leadership.”
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Rachel, a student from the US who is at her first Cop, has got in touch with us to express her frustration at the whole process. “As a youth at the Cop, I feel as though despite the displayed attention on youth, we are not listened to here. They can say all they want about youth engagement in the process, but at the end of the day, we are not at the table. This is our future at stake, it is simply unfair and unjust to be sidelined in this process.”
She has had doubts about the UNFCCC process for some time but was still optimistic. But being in Egypt has convinced her that “UN negotiations are not structured to efficiently respond to the issue of climate change”.
“As a student observer, I came to Sharm el-Sheikh to learn, to have a front row seat to what was supposed to be the exciting process of climate negotiations and movement towards action. The only thing that has become glaringly obvious to me in this experience, is just how willing world leaders and nations states are to drag their feet at the cost of the lives of future generations. Being present here, and seeing through the facade of greenwashing by nations all over the world, I felt impelled to join a protest this morning.
“It would feel wrong not to scream, not to join other youths in virtually the only process by which we have to be heard here, a permitted and surveilled protest limited in time and location. As I said, I came here to learn, though what has felt most natural and right to me in my time here has been my experience protesting, screaming, venting my anger at this system. Protesting should not be necessary in a time like this. If world leaders were doing the right thing in spheres such as this, we would not feel the responsibility to protest, this responsibility should not be cast upon the youth of the world.”
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Fiona Harvey has tweeted a video of the jaw-dropping queue to listen to US president Joe Biden’s speech.
Cop27 queue for Biden already stretches all round hall, two hours before he’s due to speak pic.twitter.com/vU0f3kPJKW
— Fiona Harvey (@fionaharvey) November 11, 2022
It stretches around one large hall and far into the next one…
Pelosi tells Cop27 “we have left incrementalism in the dust”
Nancy Pelosi has been singing the praises of Joe Biden’s climate agenda at Cop27, in what may be one of her last appearances as speaker of the US House of Representatives.
Pelosi appeared on a panel with five other Democratic lawmakers (there was an underwhelming Congressional delegation to the Egypt talks, with no Republicans joining the trip) and said that these climate summits “have always been about the survival of the planet, survival of vulnerable countries. We want more than survival, we want success. With our IRA (inflation reduction act) legislation, we have crossed a threshold of success.”
Pelosi was in an upbeat mood, saying she “saluted” the president’s achievements and that other countries will want to emulate the climate bill, which provides more than $370bn in support for clean energy projects.
“We have left incrementalism in the dust, this is about transformation,” said Pelosi, who added that she hoped Cop27 would “help save the world for the children.”
The event felt like something of a valedictory one for Pelosi, with closely-fought midterm elections in the US predicted to result in an extremely narrow Republican victory in the House. Several of her fellow Democrats called her the best speaker the US has ever had. Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, said his party would “aggressively fight any attempts to gut or weaken our hard-won climate achievements.”
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Hello, I’m Bibi van der Zee and I’m taking over for the afternoon, with thanks to my colleague Oliver Holmes. Please send stories and thoughts about how Cop27 is going so far to bibi.vanderzee@theguardian.com or @bibivanderzee.
Damian Carrington has written this powerful piece about a delegation of mothers at Cop27 making an impassioned plea to world leaders to put children’s health, rights and futures at the heart of the climate summit
“Nobody else will jump into the fire to save a child besides a mother,” says Bhavreen Kandhari, the co-founder of Warrior Moms in India, a network of mothers pushing for clean air and climate action. “There is nobody else in the world who loves you more than your mother – a mother is always protecting.”
He also spoke to Maya Mailer, the co-director of Our Kids’ Climate and the co-founder of the UK climate parent group Mothers Rise Up, who says:
“We are bringing the emotion and the heart. You walk around Cop and there’s just panels talking and words, words, words. Unless you connect with people emotionally, they are not going to move or be brave.
“All of these world leaders ultimately have a heart and that’s what we’re trying to pierce, so they can stand up to the vested interests,” she says. “Their kids are on the line as well. Mothers bring relentless determination because you will do anything for your kids and we’re not going to give up or go away. Our movement is growing, because it’s ‘everything is at stake’.”
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What has happened so far:
Today’s official topic has been decarbonisation, but we’ve had protests outside and an oil and gas executive deflecting blame for emissions.
Here is what has happened so far today at Cop27:
The US president, Joe Biden, is on his way to Sharm el-Sheikh and is due to give a speech at 5.15pm local time (3.15pm GMT).
The US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and a handful of US lawmakers are also in town and will be holding a press conference shortly.
The Occidental Petroleum CEO, Vicki Hollub, said people who call for the end of the oil and gas industry “have no clue what that would mean” and refused to say whether she accepted her company’s role in climate disasters.
An analysis of delegates found that there had been an “explosion” in fossil fuel lobbyists attending the climate summit this year, with 636 in attendance, a rise of more than 25% since Cop26 in Glasgow.
Gas producers and their financial backers have been accused of using Cop27 as an opportunity to rebrand natural gas as a transition fuel rather than a fossil fuel.
Medics from across the world have just staged a protest to highlight how climate carnage is killing their patients, including performing CPR on an inflatable globe.
That’s it from me today. I’ll be handing the blog over now to Bibi van der Zee.
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It’s like the Who’s Who of American climate justice at Cop27 today. This morning we spoke with 2020 Goldman prize winner Sharon Lavigne, and now we’ve caught up with last year’s winner, 21-year-old Nalleli Cobo from Los Angeles, who led a campaign to shut down an urban oil well that was poisoning her community.
With Joe Biden due to land any minute now, Cobb, who is recovering from cancer and has aspirations to run for president one day, had a request:
I want him to spend one night at my house so that he understands what it’s like to not be able to open your window, and see the damage oil has done … After that I’d ask him to look me in the eyes and tell me that I don’t deserve to breathe clean air. I think he will feel differently about urban oil drilling and fossil fuel extraction.
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World leaders put pressure on Egypt at Cop27 over prisoner Alaa Abd el-Fattah
As Egyptian officials strive to control the narrative and isolate the case of the detained British Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, pressure is mounting on world leaders at Cop27 to acknowledge Egypt’s poor human rights record and raise his case.
The Egyptian authorities have engaged in a sweeping public relations campaign to try to discredit Abd el-Fattah, including a digital campaign depicting him as a threat to national security.
A visibly shaken Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign minister and Cop27 president, told CNN that “this is a judicial matter, the person in question has had a fair trial … there should be respect for the judicial system.” Shoukry also cast doubt on Abd el-Fattah’s dual nationality, after he gained British citizenship while in prison last year.
Despite Egyptian officials’ efforts to present current events as business as usual, the spotlight shone on the host country for the Cop27 climate negotiations in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh has also prompted increasing global scrutiny of its human rights record.
Both the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German leader, Olaf Scholz, raised Abd el-Fattah’s case with the president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, during the talks, and Sisi reportedly told Macron he would ensure that the activist’s health “is preserved” during the conference.
The US president, Joe Biden, is due to meet Sisi at Cop27.
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Here are some of the best photos from Cop27 today:
(Well done to the photographer who was on the pre-dawn shift!)
Svitlana Romanko is a Ukrainian lawyer, climate campaigner and founder of Razom We Stand, a grassroots group calling for a permanent embargo on Russian fossil fuels and an immediate end to all investment into Russian oil and gas companies.
So far, she’s somewhat disappointed by Cop27:
I thought there would be more space to talk about the ongoing horrific fossil fuel war and the opportunity this should represent for a global green transformation, but it feels like these conversations are limited to the Ukrainian pavilion and not happening at the highest levels.
In recent weeks, Russian bombs have targeted the energy infrastructure in Ukraine, underscoring her own country’s unsustainable dependence on fossil fuels. But before the war, the country had started taking small steps towards energy transition, in part due to Russia’s occupation of the Donbas region where the coal mines are concentrated, and partly due to green tariffs boosting production. In 2021, 13.4% of Ukraine’s energy came from renewable sources, but has now lost over 80% of its wind power and 50% of solar production due to bombing in the southeast.
Romanko appreciated the European leaders who earlier this week used their short allotted speeches to mention the ongoing war, but added:
EU exports of Russian LNG has risen 46% year-year-on year in the first nine months of 2022, according to European Commission figures, the EU needs to step-up, act more globally and ban all fossil fuels and insurance. We also demand that US institutions divest the billions they have invested in Russia’s carbon bombs.
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People who want to end oil and gas industry have 'no clue', says fossil fuel CEO
Fossil fuel CEO Vicki Hollub has said people who call for the end of the oil and gas industry “have no clue what that would mean” and refused to say whether she accepted her company’s role in climate disasters.
Speaking on decarbonisation day at Cop27, Hollub, who heads Occidental Petroleum, said mounting extreme climate events, such as this year’s deadly flooding in Pakistan and drought in the horn of Africa, were the responsibility of individuals, not just the oil and gas industry.
When asked by a Guardian reporter if she felt any personal responsibility for natural disasters made worse by climate change, she said:
This is not a problem that just the oil and gas industry has. Everybody that uses a product that was generated from oil and gas has a part in this and is also responsible. Your iPhone, you are responsible for that. If you flew over here, you are responsible for what you used here. The nice clothes you are wearing right now, you are responsible. If we don’t all step up and take accountability, this doesn’t happen. You are still there thinking ‘oil and gas companies need to go away, they need to shut down their production’. You don’t understand what would happen to you if we did that. Your television goes away, … driving goes away. That’s why the transition has to be better designed. We’ve got to be much more thoughtful.
She added:
People who run round saying ‘oil and gas needs to go away’ have no clue what that would mean. I’m saying the world is responsible … Don’t ask me about oil and gas without taking some responsibility yourself and helping others understand. You have a way to help others understand that if you don’t step up.
Hollub was speaking at a CEO armchair event on corporate leadership and net zero, where she discussed Occidental Petroleum’s fossil fuel assets in the Permian basin in the southwest US and the Middle East, and the company’s investment in carbon capture technology.
She was at Cop27 as part of the UAE delegation, which will host next year’s Cop28 in Dubai. In 2017, Occidental Petroleum was listed as 55th in a Carbon Majors Report report listing the top 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions between 1988 and 2015.
I asked fossil fuel CEO Vicki Hollub if she feels guilty or takes personal responsibility for climate disasters, such this year's flooding in Pakistan or drought in the Horn of Africa at an event at #Cop27 .
— Patrick Greenfield (@pgreenfielduk) November 11, 2022
Here are the highlights from the @WeAreOxy boss .
👇👇 pic.twitter.com/SdQzcMsZGF
“We are moving forward. A lot of people in the world are telling us not to. Al Gore, every time he sees me, tells me not to build direct air capture. Why would he say that to me? Why would he tell me not to build technology that the world absolutely has to have? There are too many agendas in the world.
“I’m sorry if you don’t know that but you’ve got to do the research to find out,” she said.
Critics of carbon capture technology – sucking emissions out of the air – say it cannot be prioritised over ending fossil fuel use.
Al Gore’s team has been contacted for comment.
When asked about personal responsibility, she said: “You’re looking for a headline and I’m looking for a solution. That’s the difference between me and you.”
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'1.5C to stay alive': Medical workers says world needs CPR
Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, scientists and medical students from across the world have just staged a protest to highlight how climate carnage is killing their patients.
One doctor performed CPR on an inflatable globe as other healthcare workers - from China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Uganda, Switzerland, Poland, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, America, the Netherlands and the UK - made speeches on their personal experiences and then collapsed on the floor of the conference centre in Sharm el-Sheikh.
“Our prescription is 1.5C to stay alive”
— Nikhita Chulani (@NChulani) November 11, 2022
Healthcare workers say their patients are dying because of the impacts of climate breakdown.#Cop27 pic.twitter.com/cpaDV4evSA
They attributed a rise in deaths globally to the climate crisis, which is in turn causing fatal air pollution, malnutrition and a lack of access to healthcare.
They said their prescription is to climate justice, end fossil fuel subsidies and for “1.5C to stay alive”.
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Gas producers using Cop27 to rebrand gas as transitional fuel, experts warn
Gas producers and their financial backers see Cop27 as an opportunity for discussions about rebranding natural gas as a transition fuel rather than a fossil fuel, experts have said.
The push is coming from the host Egypt and its gas-producing allies amid a global energy crisis compounded by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The opportunity for this Cop is to have the discussion openly that natural gas, and in particular when combined with carbon capture, is a scalable energy solution allowing us to meet the needs of 8 billion people while still meeting our climate goals,” said Craig Golinowsky, of Carbon Infrastructure Partners, a Canadian private equity fund backing projects related to fossil fuels as well as carbon capture.
Environmental experts caution that burning gas, a fossil fuel, risks increasing heating far beyond the target restriction of 1.5C required to prevent major environmental disruption.
Gas is less polluting to the climate than coal, but its production involves harmful methane, and leaks from infrastructure can cause large-scale pollution.
The Guardian has reported on protests at Cop27, where activists have called on Egyptian authorities to release thousands of political prisoners.
Someone who has spotlighted the regime’s repression against its own citizens is Italian national Giorgio Caracciolo, the Middle East and North Africa manager of Dignity, an anti-torture advocacy group. On Wednesday, Caracciolo was denied entry at Cairo airport despite having the correct immigration documents and Cop accreditation.
Authorities did not provide reasons for his deportation.
Caracciolo said on Twitter:
“Personally speaking I wonder why me… Is it because the organisation I represent [focuses] on the most intimate tools used by the regime, that is torture and violence?”
(1/7) It is 2.30 am at #Cairo airport and I was just informed by an Egyptian officer that I am not welcome in the country and they will not let me in.#COP27 is taking place, the Egyptian Regime opened its doors to the world, but kept some closed.#FreeAlaa
— Giorgio Caracciolo (@GioCaracciolo) November 10, 2022
Human rights Watch and other organisations condemned the decision. “Beyond the immediate impact on Caracciolo, who has now been blocked from attending Cop27 and addressing the human rights situation in Egypt, these tactics are creating an environment of fear for all activists speaking out on human rights at Cop27.”
In case anyone was thinking of protesting Egypt’s deep economic crisis today in the capital Cairo and elsewhere, the singer Sayed Emam is here with an upbeat reminder not to bother going into the streets. The song, entitled “We won’t go down,” thoughtfully accompanied by an image of a pro-government protest on YouTube, is designed to encourage Egyptians to stay in their homes.
To add to the irony, it’s set to a backing tune reminiscent of mahraganat, a form of popular music associated with the Egyptian streets and weddings and designed to make you get up and dance – or maybe even protest. Mahraganat singers are also now essentially banned from performing in Egypt, after the head of the country’s Musicians Syndicate issued a decree two years ago that bans them from performing in any festivals, clubs cafes, concerts or other public spaces.
There have been calls for citizens to protest Egypt’s deepening cost of living crisis today on social media. In response, the country’s security forces preemptively arrested over 150 people in recent weeks according to Amnesty International.
A Dutch artist is spending 11 days of Cop27 turning a 3068-page report on the horrors that await humanity into confetti, in an effort to show how we refuse to take climate science seriously.
Johannes-Harm Hovinga’s blistering performance – titled ‘There’s an elephant in the room’ – has him sitting in a chair with a hole-puncher for 10 hours a day.
“People are invited to join in silence or to talk about the climate … while punching it paper by paper by paper knowing the importance of the words on paper they are destroying,” Hovinga said.
The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading authority on climate science, was its starkest warning yet of major inevitable and irreversible climate heating.
Hovinga said the performance shows a “lack of sense of necessity” when it comes to the climate crisis.
What to expect today
Here is what to look out for on decarbonisation day:
Joe Biden’s speech will be at 5.15pm local time (3.15pm GMT). He moved to rejoin the Paris agreement just hours after taking office in January 2020 and has since passed a $369bn package of climate investments that could cut US greenhouse gas emissions by 40%.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a handful of US lawmakers will be holding a press conference later this afternoon.
Although it is decarbonisation day, at least two fossil fuel CEOs are scheduled to speak at Cop27 on Friday. It comes after analysis of delegates found that there had been an “explosion” in fossil fuel lobbyists attending the climate summit this year, with 636 in attendance, a rise of more than 25% since Cop26 in Glasgow.
More protests are on the Cop27 site on Friday, including those highlighting the case of the hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah.
As Cop27 waits for the arrival of Joe Biden, who is feeling mightily pleased with himself after the Democrats were not obliterated in the midterm elections as forecast, climate justice activists will not be congratulating the US president, rather criticising him for climate failures.
“President Biden must declare a climate emergency. People are sick, they are dying because profits are valued more than our lives,” said Sharon Lavigne, the 2021 Goldman prize winner from Louisiana, who led a successful grassroots campaign to stop the construction of a toxic plastics plant in America’s “cancer alley”. “We put him in office. He needs to listen to frontline leaders. President Biden please meet with me today at Cop27; listen to us.”
This morning’s first protest called on world leaders to declare a climate emergency, keep fossil fuels in the ground, and pay reparations for the irreversible loss and damage already suffered - mostly by communities and countries that are least responsible for global heating.
Millions of people are still suffering in Pakistan after unprecedented rainfall and floods left a third of the country under water earlier this year. “We are paying for the crimes of corporations and the global north, who have made Pakistan a hub for climate disasters,” said one protester, Farooq Tariq. “We don’t want any more words, we want debt suspension, we want reparations, we want climate justice.”
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Joe Biden to speak at Cop27
Good morning, and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Cop27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where the theme of the day is decarbonisation.
US president Joe Biden is visiting the conference buoyed by better than expected results in the US midterms earlier this week, and is due to speak this afternoon. The full UN schedule can be found here, and we’ll bring you the most interesting and important developments as the day unfolds.
Thursday saw anger at the number of fossil fuel lobbyists attending the conference, protesters wearing white in solidarity with environmental defenders and political prisoners, and Achim Steiner, head of the UN development programme, warning that more than 50 developing countries are at risk of going bankrupt without help from the rich world. Catch up on the day’s events here.
I’m Oliver Holmes, and you can send me tips, comments, questions and complaints at oliver.holmes@theguardian.com or on Twitter at @olireports.
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