BBT has signed up to the following statement by Aldaketaldia on COP 26, and we call on our members and collaborators to take part in the demonstration on 6 November.
Between November 1 and 12, one year after the originally scheduled date, world leaders will meet again at the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, COP26, the body Supreme Court of the United Nations on Climate Change, this time in Glasgow. Twenty-six conferences have been held since 1995, and five since the 2015 Paris Agreement, where the goal of limiting global warming well below +2 ° C and making great efforts not to exceed +1.5 ° C , was agreed. We denounce that this will be a partial summit, with very little presence of the countries of the global South – which are suffering the worst of the consequences – due to the restrictions imposed and the lack of vaccination.
We declare that, despite the agreements of the 25 previous summits, neoliberalism continues to destroy the pillars of life and society, and that each year greenhouse gas emission records continue to be broken. For this reason, the average temperature of the planet is already 1.1 ºC higher than in the pre-industrial era. Thus, climate change is already a reality, and its effects are not only something that future generations will suffer, but we are already suffering. Examples of this are the loss of biodiversity, the increasingly frequent extreme events – heat waves, droughts, floods, fires … -, the melting of permafrost and glaciers, the loss of crops or global apartheid against the refugees. The short-term forecasts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published recently, are chilling.
The climate crisis is accompanied by the end of the abundant availability of fossil fuels and some materials. Renewable energy sources are necessary for decarbonization, but as the IPCC warns us, they cannot guarantee our current consumption, much less growth. For this reason, the climate emergency is a social and global problem that highlights the shortcomings of the entire capitalist system of production and consumption. The logic of continuous growth collides with the limits of the planet and with the needs of the majority, and climate change is one of the collateral effects of this senseless growth. To deal with this deep-rooted problem, superficial changes are not enough; we must reduce energy and material consumption, and abandon the objective of global economic growth.
We cannot keep delaying solutions to mitigate it. Now, the challenge is to fight as hard as we can not to exceed the warming of 1.5 ºC by the year 2100 and to promote an ecological and social transition. On the way to avoiding the most serious consequences of climate change, the countries of the global North have a great responsibility; and even more so its elites. For example, in 2018 8.7 tons of CO2 were emitted per inhabitant of the Basque Country, above the average for the EU (8.6 t) and the world (6.6 t); In addition, the richest 10% of the world produces half of the total emissions.
For all the above, we demand that the members of COP26 and the state, regional and local governments abandon the comfort of climate emergency declarations and take action. It is urgent to democratically plan the reduction of the consumption of materials and energy in a socially fair way. To do this, we propose the following measures:
● Abandon planned obsolescence and throwaway consumption. Promote repair and associated jobs.
● Ensure access for the entire population to income and basic public services in a sustainable way (health, education, housing, care services, energy, food, clean air and water…).
● Reduce working hours, distribute employment and promote the sharing of unpaid but essential everyday domestic work.
● Promote policies for sustainable mobility, promoting active travel on foot, bicycle and public transport, and reducing individual and unnecessary travel, so as not to increase the need for roads.
● Promote self-consumption and local energy communities based on renewable energy.
● End inequalities through wealth redistribution and progressive fiscal policies.
● Stop subsidizing companies that bear the ultimate responsibility for climate change.
● Stop selling false technological miracles (hydrogen, new generation nuclear power plants, carbon capture and storage …).
● Abandon the path of economic growth. Capitalism is the cause of the climate crisis, and it will not be the solution, even if they paint it green (greenwashing, industry 3.0, CO2 emissions market …).
● Absolutely prioritize reduction, reuse, recycling and composting in waste management, renouncing incineration which, among other things, is an important source of greenhouse gases.
The climate emergency, even if it is a global fight, needs local responses. In fact, it seems essential to us to draw attention to the fact that the emergency situation in which we find ourselves has to do with the policies that are made here, in the Basque Country, in matters of energy, transport, waste, spatial planning, biodiversity, etc. These policies deepen an unsustainable economic and social model that exacerbates the climate and ecological crisis. In this context, it is necessary to demand a resounding change of direction, in pursuit of a just transition. But that just transition will not occur if leadership remains in the same hands of those who have most contributed to the crisis, and that is what the authorities want when, for example, they put companies such as Iberdrola or Repsol as priority candidates to receive European funds for pandemic recovery.
There will be no just transition without an active Basque society that works for it. For this reason, on the occasion of COP26, groups and associations from different sectors of the Basque Country are trying to organize responses. It is necessary, in each province, to denounce the companies and governments that increase the causes of the climate emergency, demand real changes from the authorities, and organize a way towards another model of society. Tackling climate change is an act of climate justice with Southern societies historically robbed of their resources by the industrial and colonial North, and an act of solidarity with future generations.
NO TIME, CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW!
