Mary Robinson branded the public funds paid to fossil fuel companies as “subsidies for what’s destroying us” at COP27.
Speaking as the summit focused on energy yesterday, the former Irish president said she would like to see “the removal of the $1.8 trillion we pay a year in subsidies to fossil fuels.”
The figure also includes payments to other high-emitting industries.
Read More: Ukrainian climate activists storm Russian COP27 event calling delegation 'war criminals'
While the Elders chair admits it can’t be stopped overnight, she says “investment has to swing very strongly against that”.
“You don’t overnight kill fossil fuel because we need to move in the steps the scientists have guided us, which is 45% at least, maybe 50% by 2030 - seven years away from January,” she told the press in Egypt.
“It’s around the corner, we really have to move.”
“Fossil fuel companies are very responsible for the mess we are in,” she added, saying “anything that could be got out of the fossil fuel companies is good” on the finance front.
She also hinted at concerns about their influence on the global climate summit.
“We have a very big coal, oil and gas lobby here. It would be helpful to them if there was no 1.5,” she said.
“I cannot but believe they have very clever people, doing very clever things.
“They have been doing dangerous things to the world for years - why wouldn’t they do them here?
“The fossil fuel lobby is here in greater strength than ever before and they are tackling Africa, which is a real problem because African countries are really frustrated with the lack of support for clean energy.
“They have the resources and they know their global emissions are only 4% but they shouldn’t go that way because it doesn’t make sense.
“They won’t be competitive if they are exporting... with Saudi Arabia and shale gas and oil in the states.
“They’ll have barriers in Europe quite soon because of the carbon market stuff.
“The rest of the world will have moved on and they’ll say to Africa ‘sorry, stranded assets’ - bang, you’re gone, another injustice.
“We have to do what we can to stop it.”
Mrs Robinson, who has been raising the issue of climate justice for decades, also shared concerns about what’s happening around the 1.5 degree global warming limit agreed in Paris seven years ago.
She told us: “I am still slightly worried because I am getting whatsapps from my spies in the G20 and they are telling me at the G20 it’s also very watery - that there’s similar murmuring there as well.
“That worries me so we are still keeping up the pressure and talking to the government about pressure here and in the G20.”
While she doesn’t believe the Paris agreement will come out of COP27’s text, she has concerns about “how watery the language might be - that gets away from the fact 1.5 isn’t a target anymore”.
“The goal in Paris was to stay well below two degrees Celsius and work for 1.5.
“It we water, in any way 1.5, then all the alignment of 1.5 that business is doing, cities are doing, communities are doing, all becomes more difficult.
“It’s the scientific limit beyond which we don’t know what’s going to happen about tipping points. Do we want to take a risk?
“It’s going to be worse at 1.5 than it is now - a lot worse - so that’s as far as we should go.”
She would like to see the global climate summit deliver a finance facility for loss and damage.
“We need real money here to be honest,” she said.
“It’s so serious. I mean look at Pakistan. Could we even imagine what it’s like to have a third of your country with that big population under water.
“Lives lost, livelihoods destroyed, farmers - nothing there. How do you adapt to that?
“We really have to understand how bad it is for developing countries.
“And then the small island states that are so poor, some of them, they could be wiped - their GDP wiped by a hurricane.”
She also raised concerns about the level of ‘security’ at this year’s “very closed COP” in Egypt.
The Elders’ chair told how her communications advisor and photographer “was asked to open her camera coming” into the global climate summit.
“If I had been with her I would have read the riot act at the time,” she added.
“This is a UN COP and you see these guys out in the fields to stop protests.
“Protest is part of COP and it’s really sad that there’s been so little of that kind of energy to push for change.”
READ NEXT:
- Irish shopping centre forced to close as youths attack shoppers with eggs
Former Top Gear presenter dies at 67 after battle with motor neurone disease
Met Eireann forecast 'foehn winds' to come to cruel end as temperatures plunge
Garda 'run over' while helping motorist loses leg but out of danger
Exact date cost of living lump sum will be paid to thousands of Irish confirmed
Get breaking news to your inbox by signing up to our newsletter
