Greenpeace Australia Pacific Media Release
As the COP30 UN climate conference begins in Belém, Brazil today, Greenpeace Australia Pacific is urging the Australian government to drive forward the action needed to close the 1.5C ambition gap and end forest destruction.
The COP30 climate conference commences in Belém, Brazil today – 10 years on from the landmark Paris Agreement.
The annual climate talks begin as Super Typhoon Uwan batters communities across the Philippines – the second typhoon to hit the country in just a week – leaving a trail of destruction and deaths. A recent report shows Australia has been expanding fossil fuel production faster than any other major producer, including doubling its gas production, since the Paris Agreement.
Speaking from Belém, Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “The COP30 conference comes at a critical moment for climate action globally. We are dangerously off course from the 1.5°C goal, and soaring fossil fuel production is driving climate pollution to disastrous new highs.
“As delegates meet to begin negotiations today, over one million people across the Philippines have been evacuated from their homes as Super Typhoon Uwan makes landfall, the second severe storm to hit in just one week. Last year, over half a million people were displaced by Brazil’s most catastrophic floods on record. This same story is playing out in the Pacific and around the world as climate-fuelled disasters accelerate, driven by the rampant expansion of the fossil fuel industry.
“In Belém, we ask governments not to lose sight of the significance of the decisions being made in air conditioned rooms over the next two weeks. Every fraction of a degree of avoided heating will be measured in lives and livelihoods saved, cultures protected, the places we love safeguarded.
“Australia must confront its status as a major driver of the climate crisis globally and uphold the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target. 1.5°C must remain the goal, the scientific imperative, our legal obligation, and the lifeline for Pacific and Australian communities. We have the solutions and what matters is the action we take now.”
In Belém at COP30, Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling on the Australian government to:
- Keep the 1.5C Paris Agreement goal alive by halting new fossil fuel projects, committing to a fast, fair phase out of fossil fuels including exports, and revising Australia’s NDC to a science-aligned target.
- Ensure more grant-based climate finance for mitigation, adaption, and loss and damage.
- Introduce a polluters pay mechanism that would unlock climate finance, and ensure fossil fuel corporations pay their fair share for climate damage.
- Support action to protect forests and biodiversity, including a new 5-year Forest Action Plan to fulfil the goal of ending deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.
Carolina Pasquali, Executive Director, Greenpeace Brasil said: “COP30 needs to be a turning point. We can no longer treat forest protection, transitioning away from fossil fuels or adaptation as a menu of options. The climate crisis is advancing on all fronts, and the response needs to be ambitious, courageous and immediate.”
“President Lula made this clear at the Leaders Summit, stating that COP30 must deliver concrete roadmaps to reverse deforestation and to overcome our dependence on fossil fuels. He has sent the political signal; now it is time to turn it into real action.
“The world expects more than ambition in speeches, it expects leadership through action. That means concrete plans to end deforestation by 2030, to transition away from fossil fuel dependence, strengthening adaptation to increase climate resilience, and ensuring the finance needed to make it all real. The era of partial answers is over.”
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It should be, it needs to be, it won’t be. The corporate capture has gone too far. A more accurate name would be CopOut 30
All the time governments see Growth as their yard stcik for achievement, Environmental Degradation will continue, COP30 will be just another talk feist.
Too late,the die has been cast, the jury is in,our government is just another gutless puppet of the fossil fuel lobby.Money rules.
Never mind the destruction of the earth’s sustaining systems,what is nearly as bad is the endless bullshit about how much they care.
Is Abalone going to this jamboree? No, and why would he?
Can’t disagree with leefe or jonangel.
I’m with you three.
If the Albanese is truly concerned about Australia’s native forests they could solve the uncontrolled clear felling of old growth forests now without spending a fortune and jet exhaust emissions with flights to Belem. Brazil could do the same for the Amazon. Either Albanese doesn’t have the will to do it or he is captured by globalist industrialists. I think I know which.
Read Julian Cribb’s article in today’s Pearls & Irritations and weep.It makes Tim Winton’s dystopian novel on the results of climate disaster look more like an unfolding reality.Thanks to all those”political bootlickers”
Albanese doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the environment – never did, never will. Secure in his sinecure, at the apex of the political pile, generously remunerated at ~$622,050 p.a., well-housed with the $4.3 million Central Coast clifftop pile along with a brimming bank account from other property sales, a Sydney boy from birth to now and with little to no experience of life outside the cities… he’d be hard-pressed to name more than a handful of Australia-wide natural assets, let alone animals, birds, plants. His casual consigning the Maugean skate to probable extinction in favour of allowing Canadian, Brazilian and New Zealand salmon farms to destroy the ecosystem of the Macquarie Harbour along with exporting their profits offshore for the sake of a few local jobs and Anne Urquhart’s winning the seat following Gavin Pearce’s retirement tells you all you need to know about his total non-commitment to the health and welfare of this country’s natural assets. If John O’Brien was prescient when he penned ‘Said Hanrahan‘, he surely had Albanese in mind as a future culprit for the forlorn state of this wide brown land.
To be fair, I suppose, none of the current PM’s predecessors gave a hoot, either. The overriding ethos has always been, since whitey arrived, to dig it up, chop it down, dam it, plough it up, put the bulldozers through it, set fire to it, let the pigs, rabbits, foxes, camels, goats, horses, donkeys, indian mynahs run free and smash it to smithereens and to hell with the consequences.
It take it, you are not happy?
The essay’s title, “COP30 in Belém must be a turning point for global climate and forest action” is as succinct and appropriate as can be for a subject that is both compelling and urgent.
The phenomenon of climate change as a consequence of global warming per the emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is real, the effects are snowballing, more of humanity is now suffering in real time in ways previously unknown, despite the idiotic endeavours of the naysayers to deny the realities unfolding.
And yet, and yet… will humanity at large avoid being impacted? Will the disastrous consequences be confined to only a smallish segment of the earth’s inhabitants, non-human life forms included?
It seems not. The fossil giants would appear to have a chokehold on process; more oil is extracted, coal mined, gas pumped, and the secondary industries run at full production to refine and deliver product. Around 1.3 billion vehicles still use petrol or diesel.
Going out on a fairly sturdy limb, I reckon COP30 at Belém will go the same way as the previous 29… many words spoke, little action taken. We’re already above the 1.5C rise mooted to be the upper limit of warming, and on our way to 2.0C. Expect more heartache; natural disasters that will include fires, floods, famines, droughts, melting polar ice-caps and ice sheets and glaciers and snow caps along with distressed communities of all stripes both human and non-.
Despite the tsunami of distractions that continue to hypnotise the attention of the planet’s denizens, this remains the main game, and we’re not even close to giving it the critical attention it deserves.
The fatal flaws of the human psyche, exposed for all to see. We should hang our heads in shame and seek forgiveness from the babies of the world who will inherit this mess if they manage to survive to adulthood.
Have you ever contemplated the impact of humanity not using fossil fuels?
I’ll make a few suggestions; war, starvation, increase deaths by disease etc.
The reality is humans and fossil fuels go hand in hand and always have, if you really want to improve our world, curb GROWTH.
I’ll take it as a given that jonangel was never a debater, given his arguments have flaws big enough to drive a solar-powered bus through.
If this is the best you can do? I feel sorry for you, hopefully you’ll grow, hopefully.