REM: Governments are failing us on climate change as COP28 nears

The outcome of COP28 won’t save the world from climate chaos. That much is clear with major economies failing on climate change, the US continuing to drill fossil fuels and, in China’s case, building coal plants.

The optics of COP28 are also all wrong. The meet will start on November 30 in Dubai in the UAE, an economy driven by oil. The president of the UN conference is none other than Sultan al-Jaber, head of United Arab Emirates oil giant, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).

Climate experts agree that the burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of global warming.

According to a new UN report, the earth is accelerating to well past the chaos limit as carbon emissions continue to rise, rather than fall as they should. Wealthy countries should act ambitiously and help developing regions, said the UN’s annual emissions gap report.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “The emissions gap is more like an emissions canyon, a canyon littered with broken promises, broken lives and broken records.” He said, "Present trends are racing our planet down a dead-end 3C temperature rise.”

He added: “Leaders must drastically up their game, now, with record ambition, record action, and record emissions reductions. No more greenwashing. No more foot-dragging.”

In fact the world is on track to heat up by 2.5C to 2.9 Celsius by the end of the century, well past the international Paris Agreement limit of 1.5C to 2C above pre-industrial levels, said the report.

This will mean chaos.

At 3C degrees of warming, predict the world could enter catastrophe, with the Amazon rainforest drying out and polar ice sheets melting and ocean levels rising causing massive flooding of populated areas.