Climate despair

The planet is going through yet another ‘hottest year on record’, Lahore is once again cloaked in smog and at the top of the world’s most polluted cities rankings, and the countries of the world have gathered for the United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP – taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan from today (November 11) till November 22, giving the world another fortnight to try to come up with some means of saving the planet. While the milestones might be familiar, their urgency has only gone up. According to EU scientists, the average global temperature anomaly for the first 10 months of 2024 is 0.16 degrees Celsius warmer than the same period in 2023. It is worth noting that 2023 was the previous holder of the ‘hottest year on record’ title. This will also be the first year that the world in which the planet is over 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than in the pre-industrial period, smashing the warming limit set at the landmark Paris Agreement a mere nine years ago. It is not just the heat that is reaching levels never seen before. Smog is not a new problem for Lahore but it has never been quite this bad. Lahore’s air quality index (AQI) has surpassed the 1000 mark in recent days, with anything above 300 considered hazardous. As a result, at least 900 people have reportedly been admitted to hospitals in the city, schools have been closed and around half of all government employees are being told to work from home for a week. But smog is no longer just a Lahore problem. A large swath of the entire Punjab province is now suffering, to the point that Lahore is not even the worst-affected city. Multan’s AQI is now nearing the 2000 mark.

It does not help that the world’s largest emitter per capita had a president who abandoned the agreement during this period, and he is now back in the White House. Sadly, while his successor (and now predecessor) brought the US back into the global climate fold, this appears to have been a mainly symbolic gesture. The US pumped oil at historic levels throughout President Joe Biden’s reign and this trend is likely to continue under Trump. But even those rich countries that remained committed since the 2015 Paris Agreement do not have a climate record to boast about. This apathy has also defined their commitments towards helping poorer countries with climate adaptation and compensating them for climate losses.

The Loss and Damage Fund established at COP27 is only pledge-funded at $770 million. Pakistan alone is at a needs assessment of $30 billion from the 2022 floods catastrophe, which prompted it to lead the establishment of the Fund, alone. For building resilience by 2030, Pakistan will need an estimated $348 billion according to the World Bank. Meanwhile, UN estimates suggest that $125 trillion is required to be spent globally to reach net zero emissions by 2050. One must admit that there is simply no appetite for this kind of spending among the rich countries, where there are trillions more to be made in investing in fossil fuels and millions of votes in protecting the jobs that come with it. This is the near-sighted thinking that has brought the world to the climate tipping point. Under these circumstances, securing incremental funding gains and more stringent commitments at COP 29 might be the best the Global South can hope for. At least until the phenomenon starts to hit pockets in the rich world, which seems to count for more than anything else.