DEMOCRACY NOW
Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley addressed the audience at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow this week. “We must act in the interests of all our people,” she said. “If we don’t, we will allow the path of greed and selfishness to sow the seeds of our common destruction.” She implored global leaders to “try harder” to keep global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius, as anything above this would mean “a death sentence” for vulnerable island countries, including Barbados.
AMY GOODMAN: We end today’s show with Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley. She spoke at the opening ceremony on Monday.
PRIME MINISTER MIA MOTTLEY: The pandemic has taught us that national solutions to global problems do not work. We come to Glasgow with global ambition to save our people and to save our planet, but we now find three gaps.
On mitigation, climate pledges, or NDCs, without more, we will leave the world on a pathway to 2.7 degrees, and with more, we are still likely to get to 2 degrees. These commitments, made by some, are based on technologies yet to be developed. And this is, at best, reckless and, at worst, dangerous.
On finance, we are $20 billion short of the hundred billion. And this commitment, even then, might only be met in 2023.
On adaptation, adaptation finance remains only at 25%, not the 50-50 split that was promised nor needed, given the warming that is already taking place on this Earth. Climate finance to frontline small island developing states declined by 25% in 2019. Failure to provide the critical finance and that of loss and damage is measured, my friends, in lives and livelihoods in our communities. This is immoral, and it is unjust.
If Glasgow is to deliver on the promises of Paris, it must close these three gaps.
So I ask to you: What must we say to our people living on the frontline in the Caribbean, in Africa, in Latin America, in the Pacific, when both ambition and, regrettably, some of the needed faces at Glasgow are not present? What excuse should we give for the failure? In the words of that Caribbean icon Eddy Grant, “will they mourn us on the frontline?” When will we, as world leaders across the world, address the pressing issues that are truly causing our people angst and worry, whether it is climate or whether it is vaccines? Simply put, when will leaders lead?
Our people are watching, and our people are taking note. And are we really going to leave Scotland without the resolve and the ambition that is sorely needed to save lives and to save our planet? How many more voices and how many more pictures of people must we see on these screens without being able to move, or are we so blinded and hardened that we can no longer appreciate the cries of humanity?
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