President Jacob Zuma and several world leaders delivered stirring speeches in Durban on Tuesday evening on the need to act quickly to “save the world” from climate change – despite clear signals that political negotiators will once again delay the solutions recommended by most climate scientists.
“I don’t think you would want to disappoint the citizens of the globe... The world is in danger and we all agree that something needs to be done,” said Zuma.
“The world is looking at us with hope that we will take decisions that will save the globe for ourselves and the coming generations,” he told delegates at the opening of the crunch-time ministerial session of the 17th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP17).
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also appealed to ministers and senior negotiators from 194 nations to “pull back from the abyss” before it was too late.
“Without exaggeration, we can say that the future of the planet is at stake... including the very survival of some nations... You are the people who can bring us back from the edge.”
Ban said many islands in the Pacific and elsewhere were in danger of slipping beneath the waves.
“I have seen open sea where ice once dominated the horizon.”
He had seen dried-up lakes in North Africa and the Americas, and had met thousands of people who had lost their homes to floods or the spread of deserts.
“Is this the future we want? A world of out of control, climate change, and a devastating scarcity of vital resources? The answer is clear, even if the exact path is not.”
Yet, despite the high expectations for action, Ban acknowledged that the goal of signing a legally-binding climate change agreement “may be beyond our reach – for now”.
He said none of the uncertainties should prevent real progress being made in Durban, provided negotiations were conducted with “seriousness and persistence”. “We might liken it to riding a bicycle. You stay upright and move forward so long as you keep up the momentum.”
He reminded delegates that the World Meteorological Organisation had said that carbon emissions were now at their highest level in history.
The UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change had said that greenhouse gas levels had to be chopped in half by 2050, while the International Energy Agency had warned that the world was approaching the “point of no return”.
Yet despite impassioned calls for action delivered last night, there was no indication of a break in the political log-jam between the US on one hand and powerful developing countries like China, India, Brazil and SA.