While visiting COP26, which caused record crowding in the corridors and filled one of the largest auditoriums, former US president Barack Obama said this Monday afternoon that he hopes that Brazil, China, India, Russia and Indonesia lead the fight against the climate crisis.
The statement was made in a speech in which he urged young people to turn anger and anxiety into actions and, above all, into votes: “You may not like politics. But don’t ignore it.”
The president cited political action as the first way in which each young person can individually contribute to the climate. “Vote as if your life depended on it. Don’t take a cynical stance toward politics. We won’t have climate interventions from governments if they don’t feel pressure from voters.”
According to the former president, this was advice he always heard from his mother when, as a teenager, she was angry about something: “Let’s get to work, get moving, get involved and change what needs to be changed.”
Obama also urged the public to put pressure on companies to stop buying from those that disrespect the environment or don’t act to preserve it, and urged activists not to isolate themselves within a bubble.
“It’s no use preaching to converts or just joining those who already believe in the climate crisis. It’s necessary to listen to the resistant ones, understand their concerns and find ways that they are less affected by the necessary changes,” said the American politician.
He also told the youngsters to prepare for a marathon, because progress will be slow and confusing. “Political institutions move slowly, even when there are good intentions; entrepreneurs look to profit in the short term; international cooperation has always been difficult and made worse by misinformation online.”
In the speech, which started with a joke about being able to return to a COP without a tie, but forced to take traffic, Obama criticized former President Donald Trump, for dismantling his administration’s pro-climate policies, and the governments of China and Russia, for failing to present more ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming.
According to him, several countries failed in the commitments made in 2015, in the Paris Agreement. “Paris was a beginning, not an end. We were supposed to improve our promises every year,” he said.
Under the government of President Jair Bolsonaro (without a party), Brazil was one of the countries that retreated in its environmental actions: deforestation has increased in these six years, inspection structures were dismantled and, last year, the goal of reducing emissions was reduced rather than enlarged.
At this COP26, the Brazilian delegation revised its target, leaving, however, the amount of polluting gas to be cut equivalent to that promised in 2015, that is, without the expected ambition.
According to Obama, the world is currently going through a period of geopolitical tension greater than that of 2015, due to the pandemic, nationalism, the lack of US leadership under Trump and the retreat of multilateralism.
“The climate, however, needs to transcend all of that. We can’t afford to go back. We can’t even afford to stay where we are. We have to move forward and it has to be now,” he said.
According to the former president, in moments when he feels discouraged and “dystopian images begin to appear in dreams”, he remembers that “cynicism is the resource of cowards”.
“The fight against the climate crisis is not just about numbers and science, but about politics, culture, morality and joint work,” he said.
Prior to the speech, Obama had already spoken with a group of young activists, who called him on for the failure of the United States to fulfill its promise to finance the climate transition in less-developed countries — something he defended as necessary later in the speech.
“Just as Obama did, Brazil is also doing it, which is to promise other governments to do it,” Brazilian activist Txai SuruÃ, 24, who spoke to leaders at the opening of COP26, said after the meeting.
“What we were saying is, show the money, show where the resource is. Stop just making promises and start keeping those promises.”
For Txai, “it is very contradictory for Obama to come and speak to young people, when before that we were the ones telling him that we no longer accept false promises.”
She assesses that the US is the main actor in the climate crisis: “They have to be responsible. And it’s us who are sending the message to him, he’s not going to teach us anything, no.”
In the late afternoon, the former US president would meet with more young leaders. “To work,” he said, at the end of his speech.
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