TRANSCRIPT:
After days of discussions around global warming, there's been a change of pace on day six of the United Nations climate summit: COP28.
Talk has turned to global cooling.
A report by the United Nations Environment Program has found nearly three-quarters of the potential for reducing cooling emissions by mid-century can be found in G20 countries.
The United States, Canada and Kenya are among 63 countries to join a pledge to deeply cut cooling-related emissions, marking the world's first collective focus on climate-warming emissions from cooling, which includes refrigeration for food and medicine and air conditioning.
Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program, Inger Andersen, has outlined how it will benefit the climate.
"Measures to reduce emissions by over 60% by 2050, can save $22 trillion, reduce peak load demand by 1.5 to 2 terawatts. So incorporating passive cooling, which I think we all know when we walk around this beautiful campus, the moment we are under a shaded area, the moment that we are where trees are, we understand immediately what cooling means, what passive cooling, and how it works."
But United States Climate Envoy John Kerry says 63 countries isn't enough - and has called on the other present countries to join the cooling pledge.
"You know, it's just not excusable not to have everybody. There are about 195 countries here and there are people all over the world, who depend on all of us to make these choices. So let's band together become the crusaders, the people who are willing to fight for this transition faster. We have an ability save lives. We have an ability to do Kigali [Cooling Efficiency Program (K-CEP)] faster. We have an ability to actually get cooling beyond Kigali, and we have an ability to implement this on a much faster basis. Shame on us if we don't take the opportunity to do that."
Nuclear energy has been a surprise inclusion in the talks.
John Kerry has announced the United States will work with other governments to speed up efforts to make nuclear fusion a new source of carbon-free energy.
“Collaboration and knowledge shared are essential to beginning to accelerate what we're trying to do. And they're vital as we collectively tackle the scientific and engineering challenges that lie ahead. This strategy identifies five areas of work that will help us to realise the promise of this technology. And they are: R&D, supply chain and marketplace, regulation, workforce and education, and engagement."
COP28 has also attracted its fair share of criticism.
Activists attending the summit have voiced their concerns around the high number of fossil fuel lobbyists at the event.
At least 1,300 employees of organisations representing fossil fuel interests registered to attend COP28, more than three times the number found in an Associated Press analysis of last year’s talks.
Climate activist Zaki Mamdoo says that is unacceptable.
“It’s ridiculous that this COP has hosted so many fossil fuel lobbyists, who really come here to look for ways in which to continue to make extraordinary and unreasonable profits off the backs of our people and of the destruction of our communities. This is not a space in which those deals and those voices should be represented because those voices carry one mandate, and one mandate alone, and that is to continue destroying the planet in order to make profits.”
Mr Mamdoo says there needs to be a complete phase-out of fossil fuels and not a phase-down.
“We know that the fossil fuel industry sits at the very core, the very root of the climate crisis, but also the interlocking crisis of inequality, of exclusion, or poverty, and it’s often directly responsible for the violence that is subjected on our communities. And so, phasing down is not an option. One, it is simply not enough to meet the crisis; it is not ambitious enough; it’s not bold enough.”
With less than one week of COP28 to go, negotiations are expected to continue over language in the final summit agreement regarding an end to fossil fuel use.
