Climate conference in Peru - good for nothing!

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Climate conference in Peru – good for nothing

By Joe Ware

2014-12-15-cop-20-590.jpg

Lots of talk, little action at COP 20. (UNClimatechange under a Creative Commons Licence)

The climate summit in Peru didn’t do anything about the big problems. Now we don’t have much time left, says Joe Ware. We only have twelve months before the meeting that will decide the future of the climate of the world.

The heads of state meet in Paris in December next year to sign the world climate agreement. They will have a lot of work to do because they didn’t do anything about all the big problems at this month’s climate conference in Lima, Peru. It ended early hours on Sunday morning – 30 hours late.

There has been a lot of action on fighting climate change this year. Hundreds of thousands of people protested on the streets of New York and other cities. The growing divestment campaign means that universities, churches and other investors have stopped investing in fossil fuel companies. And we’ve seen the historic US-China agreement to cut CO2 emissions.

But governments in Lima did not respond to all this. They only agreed to a weak agreement to push most of the big problems into next year. They have agreed on cuts in CO2 emissions for each country. But they haven’t introduced good rules to see if these will be enough to stop dangerous global warming. Other very important problems which will have to be part of any agreement on how much money and other support there will be for poorer countries to adapt to a changing climate (that the richer countries caused).

So governments will need to do a lot of work now before the Paris meeting. We need a lot of strong people to tell our leaders that people suffering most from climate change (like the Typhoon victims of the Philippines) can’t wait any more.

We don’t have much time.

Joe Ware is a Church & Campaigns Journalist, Christian Aid.

NOW READ THE ORIGINAL: http://newint.org/blog/2014/12/15/climate-change-summit-lima/ (This article has been simplified so the words, text structure and quotes may have been changed).