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This is an extract from Temperature Check, The Journal’s climate newsletter, which is sending special daily editions for COP27. A more detailed edition was sent yesterday evening on the first day of the conference.
Sign up in the box at the end of this article to receive Temperature Check during COP27 and once a month afterwards to your email inbox for free.
Three months after countries packed up their bags and travelled home from COP26 in Glasgow with a new climate pact, Putin began a brutal invasion of Ukraine.
It’s the elephant in the room at COP27; Russia’s war on Ukraine has created an entirely different landscape at this COP when compared to the last one.
The impacts of the war on energy, food and finances are mammoth and all of those are in someway linked to climate change.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the conference via livestream yesterday, telling countries that they “must stop those who, with their insane and illegal war, are destroying the world’s ability to work united for a common goal”.
He said that leaders must tell others who don’t take climate change seriously that “they are making a catastrophic mistake”.
“They are the ones who start wars of aggression when the planet cannot afford a single gunshot, because it needs global joint actions.”
One feature of COP is that lots of countries and organisations host pavilions – spaces where they showcase their climate efforts or call for change and hold events. For the first time, Ukraine has its own pavilion at a COP this year.
I took some time to visit it, starting by ‘stepping in’ to areas that have been ravaged by Russian troops with a VR headset, with the 360-degree view showing footage from Kyiv and some of the other worst-hit cities in Ukraine.
A showcase of Ukrainian soil samples highlighted the diversity of the country’s soil but also how Russian shells have blown through the ground and exposed the earth underneath.
A diorama of renewable energy sources like wind and solar told attendees: “Expanding the process of decarbonisation is the way towards making the world independent on Russian gas and also a swift reaction to global climate change.”
Also on display was a section of a ten-year-old oak tree that grew in Irpin, near Kyiv, but which was hit by Russian bullets.
The sense I got from some politicians and UN officials was that they were gesturing towards ‘geological situations’ that complicate climate action – but that they weren’t willing to name Russia as being responsible for those situations.
Maybe that’s in part because Russia is in the room.
Although Vladimir Putin did not attend, the country is still a party to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change Convention and is represented by delegates at COP.
Each delegation has an office space in one area of the conference centre, and curiously enough, Russia’s is located at the very end of the long hallway, tucked away behind a corner. It would be difficult to spot unless you were looking for it.
Switzerland’s office is in a comparable position on the other end of the hall, but it’s also closer to the main entrance.
I asked Taoiseach Micheál Martin what he thought about the beating-around-the-bush going on at COP over Russia.
“I was unequivocal at a forum that I attended in terms of nailing it in respect of Russia’s culpability here, in terms of imposing this war on the people of Ukraine that has been illegal and immoral,” he said.
He also said that other countries “can’t use Ukraine as an excuse to divert from our targets in respect of climate change”.
“I would hope that the European Union is devising plans whereby we use the war on Ukraine as a catalyst for moving faster on renewables.”
There’s been plenty of hope expressed at the conference that the war should not be used as an excuse to avoid taking necessary climate action but not a massive amount of discussion about how to actually make sure that doesn’t happen.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney also attended COP yesterday, and I asked if he is concerned about the impact the war could have on the COP27 outcomes despite suggestions that such a thing could never happen.
He didn’t really answer that in his response, but he did say: “I think in the medium-term,, what the war in Ukraine is doing is accelerating the EU’s commitment to renewables as a way of powering our economies and our societies.
“We are going to move away from a reliance on Russia and I think a reliance on other countries that provide carbon-based fuels in the future. But that can’t happen, of course, overnight.”
Coveney added that “in the short-term, we have seen some countries turn back to coal and turn back to carbon-based fuels, like LNG, for example”.
“But that is a short-term emergency measure, make no mistake about that.”
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They’ve known this for years but still have done nothing about it. Forward thinking and Irish Government don’t go together in a sentence.
@Ciaran Farrelly: they don’t shine at any kind of thinking really
What about using windfall money to invest in infrastructure like our decrepit water pipes?
@Phil O’ Meara:
or housing;
or roads;
or schools;
or hospitals;
or trains;
or giant printers!!
Why has the journal not reported any of the recent good news on the economic front? Lower unemployment again, higher tax receipts, evidence that one of the multinationals based her pays more than the headline 12.5% rate?
If you only read the Journal you’d swear that the country is struggling while in fact it’s booming!
@joe:
But you can’t complain if booming is about!
@joe: booming fot the few..
@joe: that wouldn’t fit with the Left Wing bias.
@joe: less people on the dole can easily be made to look well when you see people being dumped into the likes of seetec or tus, and the fact is the higher tax receipts are coming from people already over stretched with crappy pay packets and stealth tax after stealth tax……you might want everyone to be all happy because in your eyes its a wonderful time, but sadly for lots of people there is no recovery and most are barely keeping their heads above water
@Michael Patrick Newell: Well you have that because one million people in Ireland pay little or no tax at all.
@Michael Patrick Newell: look around you and open your eyes. There are jobs for anyone who wants them. You have to start somewhere, start in a low level job and work your way up.
The prospects that come from having a job are much greater than those that come from not having one.
Life is what you make it!
@joe: its a false economy.
More in work than a few years ago but also more shitty jobs. Far less permanent jobs, lower real wages. Unaffordable rent.
When a person earning an average wage hasn’t a hope of buying a house the society is in serious trouble.
The rich poor divide is growing rapidly we are heading towards having a lower income tier of society who can never own property with a very small proportion owning everything….
sound familiar? Is should because we have had it here before with the landed gentry. We are heading for a return to feudal times with pesants and elite.
@joe: What is booming Joe ? does that mean theres a bust coming too..
Its Booming for bankers and Property Owners .. while people with even decent jobs struggle to pay rent
@joe: Yeah, all those cribbing and moaning should “commit suicide”.
@Gowon Geter: there’s always a busy coming. It’s just a question of when! That’s how economics works!
@Gowon Geter: tourism, restaurants, bars, tech, construction. A knock on from that is a load of support jobs in the wider services sector.
@joe: Ok Joe. You get a job in the service sector, then try to afford rent (haha), health insurance (because wouldn’t want to wait a week on a trolley or a year for a scan), groceries, utilities, you’ll probably need a car because good luck finding suitable accommodation within walking distance from your wonderful new job and public transport is just not a viable option in many places so then there’s motor tax, car insurance, petrol, (a carbon tax coming down the tracks, and if you own a laptop, phone or TV you’ll probably be hit for a TV licence eventually too), oh and also try to save for a mortgage that you’ll never qualify for on your salary from this wonderful job but don’t worry, as you put it it’s all about work ethic and Ireland is a bountiful land of plenty for those who don’t want to just sit on their ass on the dole, why, work your way up in that job and in maybe 10-15 years you won’t be in the red every month. Hurrah. Seriously, have you actually been paying attention to the state of this country and challenges workers face, how expensive it is just to live here? or are you in some sort of little wealthy bubble where none of this affects you so you look down at the great unwashed and assume they must not be as smart or talented as you are, sure why else would they be struggling?
When the shinners get into power they will bring in a sustainable corporation tax policy that will cover everything…. bring forth the shinners
@Tony Henry: tell you what muppet, look around the country its in a terrible mess, and guess what it’s not SF in government!!
@Tony Henry: well they cant be any worse than the role over for a brown envelope or cushy job FFG circus act who would rather pucker up to large corporations and then expect the joe soap tax payer or irish business to pick up the tab……bring fourth the clowns of the FFG clown college
@rumug: don’t SF have majorities on councils?
@milton friedman: here and there they are. What’s your point? County councils have little to no power.
The first paragraph says it all about this Government, “reliance on using corporate tax receipts to plug spending overruns”
Why is there so many spending overruns is the first place. Tax payers money been wasted every day while so many worthy causes are crying out for extra funding. Disgraceful
The people’s money trough can add more and more tax under FFG rule…
@Willy Mc Bride: What?
We’re a high cost economy that can’t afford itself anymore they should of let the troika sort out the place before the kicked them out ,
Possibly but, when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
Strange I didn’t hear a peep from the IFAC when the government were signing off on the dodgiest of dodgy deals in relation to the 3 billion euro broadband. Cos if they think that made any economic sense given how its been done and where it will be sold to after, then these lot really aren’t good with numbers. Don’t worry lads in order to avoid the multinationals from ever paying the full amount they are meant to, we will just lump another tax on the irish and label it something to do with the climate or health, that usually works and gets a nice juicy tax robbery i mean take
Same old story the have and the have nots , the poor are been forced to pay even if it leaves them hungry as the rich continue to feed their bank accounts .
It’s cool, we have an entire population of idiots who will continued to vote FFG and pay a whole battery of new income taxes, stealth taxes, property, water, carbon taxes, air, death etc so that the poor, struggling mega-corporations aren’t out of pocket.
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