"Time is running out: we have made significant progress since the Paris agreement but we must do more", both "collectively and individually": this is how Barack Obama opened his long-awaited speech at CoP26 in Glasgow.
The alarm comes from the small island states, and it is a bit like the one once "in the coal mines of the canaries to report gas leaks and impending disasters".
"In many ways the islands are like the canary in a mine in this situation. They are sending us a message: if we don't act, it will be too late. We all have a role to play, we all have a job to do, we all have sacrifices to do. We who are richer have contributed to aggravating the problem and therefore we now have an extra weight to bear to help and assist the most vulnerable "in the face of the effects of the climate crisis.
Obama, who was the protagonist of the failed UN conference in Copenhagen and of the partially successful one in Paris in 2015, stressed that in the years that have passed since Paris, various commitments have remained only on paper: "In recent years, not enough has been done", he said. cut short, "most countries have failed to meet the plans established six years ago."
The former president expressed his appreciation for the approval in Congress of Joe Biden's infrastructure plan and said he was confident that the one for welfare and climate will also be approved in the coming weeks.
And he attacked Russia and China ("Discouraging their absence") and Donald Trump: "In the United States, some of our progress on fighting climate change stopped when my successor decided to unilaterally withdraw from the Paris Agreement in his first year in office ". Obama expressed regret for Trump's "four years of hostility to climate science" and his "climate denial". But there is even deeper and broader concern that "politics around the world falls short of what must be done to save the planet."
But the former US president, while praising the youth movement that is fighting against global warming, must collect the attack of the activist Vanessa Nakate: "When I was 13, in 2009, you promised 100 billion dollars to finance the fight against climate change. The United States have betrayed their promises, this will cost loss of life in Africa, ”he wrote on Twitter posting an old video in which Obama intervened at COP15 ensuring policies to combat climate change. "The richest country on Earth does not contribute enough to life-saving funds", added the activist, attacking: "You want to meet the young people of CoP26. We want the facts".
(Unioneonline / L)