THE David Wallace-Wellsjournalist of the “New York Times”, author of the influential work “Uninhabited Earth. A story of the future” (Metaihmio, 2019, original title: The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after warming), speaks in “Vima” about the Synod.
Six years after writing your cautionary tale, are we better off or worse off?
“The risks have increased. There are some reasons to believe that the planet’s distant future may not be as bleak as it seemed likely in 2019. But at the level of public awareness and public policy, in recent years we have moved in the wrong direction.
less discussion among leaders, less commitment to action. At meetings such as the COP, the UN General Assembly and the World Economic Forum in Davos, there is a step down the scale of priorities. This in itself is not the end of the climate game because decarbonisation is still happening at a rapid pace. However, there is greater complacency and denial.”
What is the significance of choosing Belem for the COP30 Summit?
“The Amazon has already been transformed from a carbon sink, which helped combat global warming, into a source of carbon due to logging and exploitation.
It’s worrying, because the Amazon is doing a huge job of keeping the planet healthy. When I saw President Lula in New York in September, he said that bringing world leaders face to face with the rainforest itself would make them understand the urgency of the crisis. It is certainly important to hold the conference in a place on the front line of the climate crisis battle. Beyond the Amazon, Brazil itself is important. We live in a geopolitical moment in which the rules of the planet are no longer solely enforced by the US.
We’re not even in a US-China bipolar period. , to consolidate geopolitical, but also energy independence and climate resilience. Thanks to falling costs of clean energy, the world’s poor countries are now freeing themselves from carbon emissions, declaring a kind of independence from world leaders. This is an indirect indictment of the climate policy of the past decade, in which the world’s rich countries have failed to live up to their decarbonisation obligations.
But it is also a sign of relative hope that the world is moving in the right direction, even without the support of the global North. Many countries in the global South are actually moving faster. It remains impossible to achieve the goals we set in Paris a decade ago, but geopolitical developments are creating new dynamics. I think we have lost something very important as we move into a new context where each country is asked to take on decarbonisation and resilience on their own. This is a dramatic setback, but there is encouraging activity among developing countries, many of which are on faster decarbonisation paths than predicted.”
What do you think of President Donald Trump’s attitude towards COP30?
“He basically ignores her. And, when he pays attention to her, he undermines her, with the action of certain diplomats. Of course, it can be said that Trump follows more elegantly a policy that his predecessors also followed covertly. On the other hand, rhetoric also matters and President Trump is showing an ugly face of the US. The US is currently the largest exporter of oil and natural gas in the world.
we are doubling down on dirty expensive energy sources and canceling projects within our borders that could provide much cheaper energy. We do not yet know, of course, what will be the fate of China’s alternative bets on green technology and decarbonization. But for those of us who believe in some value of American leadership on the world stage, it’s a pretty dark time.”
You’ve explored how climate change can destabilize societies, fueling nationalism, mass migration, the mental health crisis, and you also talk about worsening inequalities. Do you think these should be on the priorities of COP30?
“Some of our predictions are coming true quickly at the level of individual disasters, such as the fires in Los Angeles. Of course, the countries that produce the largest numbers of immigrants are usually those under climate stress, which also causes a shift to authoritarianism, as we see in politically destabilized Sahel countries.
However, there is also remarkable human resilience in the face of disasters. Sometimes, however, a lack of empathy and shallowness of moral imagination. A meeting like the COP must also deal with the “normalization” of climate chaos, which seems more like something normal in the mindsets.
Describe how crop failures can threaten global food security. How do you think COP30 could respond?
“Warming is harmful to crops because it changes seasonal patterns and therefore areas that were optimal for certain crops become unsuitable, and it is difficult to move arable land. , as well as the increase in extreme weather events.
Hundreds of millions of people are already needlessly suffering from food insecurity. This is not because the climate has already reduced the amount of food. In fact, each year we produce more food than the last. It happens because food production systems have become more unstable. And this comes with a financialization that has proven disastrous for the world’s poor.
As a result, levels of extreme hunger are rising, even as overall global food productivity is higher. The global food system has become much less reliable, and food supplies that should be directed to the world’s poor are more often drawn from the rich.”
