It’s a Mad World, but What if…?

Are you having a Merry Christmas as a means of escaping from our messed-up world? Or could there actually be something to celebrate? And, might there just be hope after the COP30 summit?

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The noises coming out of the Belem conference centre weren’t optimistic. Fine words, but very little finance to help preserve the rainforests. The USA absent from the talks in any shape or form, too busy drilling, baby, drilling. The usual suspects like the Saudis putting blocks in the way of any attempt to agree to phase out fossil fuels. China treating the summit as a fayre in which to advertise their renewable technologies, but taking no leadership in the battle to restore our planet. Blah, blah, blah as Greta Thunberg described previous gatherings.  

UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres has consistently pleaded with the international community to act quickly. He must have found the stubbornness of those nations with vested oil and gas interests excruciating. The Pacific and Caribbean island nations, some repeatedly battered by cyclones, others being submerged, must have been even more exasperated, stating that they ‘stand at the frontline of the climate crisis’.  

So, how did the summit end? Was anything salvaged from the wreckage of this most lavish and expensive of exercises that overran by 27 hours?

Well, yes actually. Against the odds. The group ‘Outrage and Optimism’, which is headed by highly respected international experts, published a podcast (see note). It said that:

‘The final hours of COP30 in Belém were as tense and unpredictable as any seen in recent climate diplomacy. According to the official COP30 podcast from the team at Outrage + Optimism, the closing plenary veered from delay to confusion to open anger, before an exhausted room finally agreed a text that almost fell apart at the last moment.’

The day was saved, and the summit able to agree a final text, due to two factors. Firstly, several developing nations drew back from staging a walkout. Colombia, Uruguay, Panama, Sierra Leone and others had become frustrated with the text of the draft final agreement, saying that it didn’t reflect their interests. They believed it needed to be much more ambitious. But they chose to stay in the room because they were unwilling to give up on the multinational process. A weak agreement was better than none.

Secondly, the president of the conference made a personal apology for ignoring the Colombian representative who had raised their hand to voice an objection. The president apologised, then humbly admitted that he’d been worn out, and hadn’t noticed the hand. This apology changed the atmosphere throughout the auditorium, quenching the resentment and anger that had previously built up.  

The podcast continues with fascinating insights into the way several countries are forging ahead with decarbonising their energy grids. Pakistan, for example, has installed twenty times more solar in three years than the UK, France, Canada and New Zealand combined. [I haven’t been able to fact-check this statistic, but there’s certainly been a huge surge in consumer-led solar power installation, and African countries are looking to follow Pakistan’s lead]. Uruguay now generates 98 percent of its power from renewables, halving costs and creating 50,000 jobs.

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During Advent, we’ve been praying the verses of that strange hymn, ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’, a plea to Jesus Christ to come and take up his reign as King of the Nations. The world is in crying need of a strong, loving ruler. Meanwhile in the present age, we see glimpses of that longed-for kingdom. Jesus made clear that faith is what pleases God. And exercising faith includes passionate, persistent prayer. Here’s the point: I know that many, many Christians, and many churches during their intercessions, prayed their hearts out over the COP30 summit. To what extent was the Holy Spirit directing the salvaging of the final agreement in Belem? We shall never know, but it seems some of those scenes in the conference room were truly extraordinary.

There was also the turnaround in the British delegation’s negative position on the Just Transition Mechanism. Tearfund asked us to pray, Friends of the Earth asked us to petition Ed Milliband, and at the last moment Britain withdrew its objection and supported the creation of a fund to help developing nations finance their transition to renewable energy.

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So, let’s take heart. The years ahead will be challenging, that’s for sure. But Jesus ‘will never leave us nor forsake us’ (Hebrews 13 vs 6) and will one day fulfil his promises to bring this age to its end.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

[Note: the podcast is summarised by Rev Dr Mike Perry from the Salisbury Diocese, writing on the website of Christian Environmental charity A Rocha.]