europe
Europe bolsters pioneering tech rules with help from Haugen
European lawmakers have pioneered efforts to rein in big technology companies and are working to strengthen those rules, putting them ahead of the United States and other parts of world that have been slower to regulate Facebook and other social media giants facing increasing blowback over misinformation and other harmful content that can proliferate on their platforms.
While Europe shares Western democratic values with the U.S., none of the big tech companies — Facebook, Twitter, Google — that dominate online life are based on the continent, which some say allowed European officials to make a more clear-eyed assessment of the risks posed by tech companies largely headquartered in Silicon Valley or elsewhere in the U.S.
But that’s only part of the explanation, said Jan Penfrat, senior policy adviser at digital rights group EDRi.
Read:Could Facebook sue whistleblower Frances Haugen?
The question, Penfrat said, should also be: “Why is the U.S. so much lagging behind? And that may be because of the immense pressure from the homegrown companies” arguing to officials in Washington that stricter rules would hobble them as they compete with, for example, Chinese rivals.
Drawing up a new package of digital rules for the 27-nation European Union is getting a boost from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who answered questions Monday in Brussels from a European Parliament committee. It's the latest sign of interest in her revelations that Facebook prioritized profits over safety after the former data scientist testified last month to the U.S. Senate and released internal documents.
If the EU rules are done right, “you can create a game-changer for the world, you can force platforms to price in societal risk to their business operations so the decisions about what products to build and how to build them is not purely based on profit maximization," Haugen told lawmakers. “And you can show the world how transparency, oversight and enforcement should work.”
Since Haugen left Facebook, the company has renamed itself Meta as it focuses its business on a virtual reality world called the metaverse.
“I’m shocked they picked this name,” she said. In the book that inspired the term, “the metaverse is a dystopian thing, that people’s lives are so unpleasant that they need to hide in the system for half of their day.”
Haugen has been on a European tour, meeting lawmakers and regulators in the EU and United Kingdom who are seeking her input as they work on stricter rules for online companies amid concerns that social media can do everything from magnify depression in teens to incite political violence. A wider global movement to crack down on digital giants is taking cues from Europe and gaining momentum in the U.S. and Australia.
Europe has been a trailblazer in applying more scrutiny for big tech companies, most famously by slapping Google with multibillion-dollar fines in three antitrust cases. Now, the European Union is working on a sweeping update of its digital rulebook, including requiring companies to be more transparent with users on how algorithms make recommendations for what shows up on their feeds and forcing them to swiftly take down illegal content such as hate speech.
The rules are aimed at preventing bad behavior, rather than punishing past actions, as the EU has largely done so far.
France and Germany also are bringing in legislation requiring social media platforms to take down illegal content quicker, though these rules would be superseded by the EU ones, which are expected to take effect no earlier than 2023.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has only recently started cracking down on big tech companies, with regulators fining Facebook and YouTube over allegations of privacy violations and the government suing over their huge share of the market in the last couple of years. American lawmakers have proposed measures to protect kids online and get at the algorithms used to determine what shows up on feeds, but they all face a long road to passing.
While Haugen’s testimony and the documents she has provided have shed light on how Facebook’s systems work and spurred efforts in the U.S., European lawmakers may not be that surprised by what she has to say.
Read:Ex-Facebook manager criticizes company, urges more oversight
“The fact that Facebook is disseminating polarizing content more than other kinds of content is something that people like me have been saying for years,” said Alexandra Geese, a European Union lawmaker with the Green party. “But we didn’t have any evidence to prove it.”
European lawmakers have been interested in digging in to algorithms, as they work on requiring platforms to be more transparent with users on how artificial intelligence makes recommendations on what content people see.
“It’s rather about looking under the hood and regulating the kind of mechanisms that a company, a platform established to disseminate content or to direct people down rabbit holes into extremist groups,” Geese said. What Haugen is doing is “shifting the focus, and I think this is something that many other people before didn’t see.”
In the U.K., which left the European Union last year, the government also is working on raft of digital regulations, including an online safety bill that calls for a regulator to ensure tech companies comply with rules requiring them to remove dangerous or harmful content or face big financial penalties.
For the European Union, there’s still a lot of wrangling over the final details of the rules, two packages known as the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, which the EU Commission hopes to get approved next year.
Free speech campaigners and digital rights activists worry that EU rules requiring platforms to swiftly remove harmful content will lead to overzealous deletion of material that isn't illegal. In a bid to balance free speech requirements, users will be given the chance to complain about what content is removed.
In London, there's been a similar debate over how to define harmful but illegal content.
Both the EU and U.K. rules call for hefty fines worth up to 10% of a company's annual global turnover, which for the biggest tech companies could amount to billions of dollars in revenue.
Migrants aided by Belarus try to storm border into Poland
Hundreds if not thousands of migrants sought to storm the border from Belarus into Poland on Monday, cutting razor wire fences and using branches to try and climb over them. The siege escalated a crisis along the European Union's eastern border that has been simmering for months.
Poland's interior ministry said it had rebuffed the illegal invasion and claimed the situation was under control. The Defense Ministry posted a video showing an armed Polish officer using a chemical spray through a fence at men who were trying to cut the razor wire. Some migrants threw objects at police. Video footage from Belarusian media showed people using long wooden poles or branches to try to get past a border fence as police helicopters circled overhead.
Defense Ministry video taken later Monday showed the migrants settling in for the night by the border, having put up scores of tents and cooking meals.
“A coordinated attempt to massively enter the territory of the Republic of Poland by migrants used by Belarus for the hybrid attacks against Poland has just begun,” a spokesman for Poland's security forces, Stanislaw Zaryn, said in a statement.
Noting that it's also NATO's eastern border, Zaryn stressed that the “large groups of migrants ... are fully controlled by the Belarusian security services and army.” He accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of acting to destabilize Poland and other EU countries to pressure the bloc into dropping its sanctions on Minsk. Those sanctions were put into place after Belarus cracked down brutally on democracy protests.
Read: Over 2,000 migrants march out of southern city in Mexico
Piotr Mueller, Poland's government spokesperson, said 3,000 to 4,000 migrants were next to the Polish border on the Belarusian side.
Polish border officials said the border crossing in Kuznica, in the northeast, will be closed early Tuesday.
There was no way to independently verify what was happening. Journalists have limited ability to operate in Belarus and a state of emergency in Poland is keeping reporters and human rights workers out of the border area.
The massing of people at the border appeared to rev up the crisis that has being going on for months in which the autocratic regime of Belarus has encouraged migrants from the Mideast and elsewhere to illegally enter the European Union, at first through Lithuania and Latvia and now primarily through Poland.
Anton Bychkovsky, spokesman for Belarus’ State Border Guard Committee, told The Associated Press that the migrants at the border are seeking to “exercise their right to apply for refugee status in the EU.” Bychkovsky insisted they “are not a security threat.”
But the massive group was viewed as a threat by Poland and other European countries, including Germany — the main destination for many. Steffen Seibert, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, told reporters Monday that “the Belarusian regime is acting as a human trafficker.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on the bloc's 27 nations to approve extended sanctions on the Belarusian authorities “responsible for this hybrid attack.”
She said two top EU officials — EU Commission vice president Margaritis Schinas and EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell — will travel to the main countries of origin for the migrants to “ensure that they act to prevent their own nationals from falling into the trap set by the Belarusian authorities.”
The EU said it hoped that Poland would finally accept help from Frontex, the bloc’s border agency, a step that Poland’s ruling nationalists have so far refused to do. Frontex would not comment Monday on the border situation.
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price expressed concern “with disturbing images and reports emanating from the Belarus-Poland border” and stressed that the U.S. “strongly condemns the Lukashenko regime’s political exploitation and coercion of vulnerable people and the regime’s callous and inhumane facilitation of irregular migration flows across its borders.”
He said the U.S. was calling on “the regime to immediately halt its campaign of orchestrating and coercing irregular migrant flows across its borders into Europe" and warned that if the regime “refuses to respect its international obligations and commitments ... we will continue to pressure Lukashenko and will not lessen our calls for accountability."
Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on Twitter that more than 12,000 soldiers have been deployed to the border and a volunteer Territorial Defense force was put on alert. He also posted video footage of what appeared to be a large group of migrants in Belarus, near Kuznica.
Polish ministers held an emergency meeting on the border crisis, with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki writing on Facebook that Poland's border is “sacred” and “not just a line on the map."
Read: Ransomed and beaten: Migrants face abuse in Libyan detention
Poland's deputy foreign minister, Pawel Jablonski held talks with Iraqi charge d'affaires Hussein al-Safi on ways of ending the migration crisis and thanked Iraq for having Belarus close its consulates in Baghdad and Irbil that were giving tourist visas to migrants.
Meanwhile, in Poland's EU neighbor Lithuania, officials were preparing for the possibility of a similar incursion, with the Interior Ministry proposing to declare an emergency situation.
“We are getting ready for all possible scenarios,” said Rustamas Liubajevas, the head of Lithuania's border guards.
Since the summer, Poland and Lithuania have seen thousands of migrants from the Mideast and Africa trying to cross into the EU. Poland has sought to block the attempts or send those they catch back into Belarus.
Belarusian political analyst Valery Karbalevich told the AP that the Moscow-backed Lukashenko regime seemed to be trying to use the migrants “to scare” the EU.
“The largest attack of migrants on EU borders is taking place three days after Belarus and Russia signed a new agreement on military cooperation. The Kremlin is at least aware of the details of what’s happening,” Karbalevich said.
German court sentences mother to life for killing her 5 kids
A 28-year-old mother in Germany was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison Thursday for the murder of five of her six children at their home in the western city of Solingen, German news agency dpa reported.
The regional court in Wuppertal established the particular gravity of the crime in its verdict. In most cases, such a finding rules out release from prison after 15 years, the amount of time often served by people given live sentences in Germany.
Also Read: Protest strike shuts down Haiti amid search for missionaries
The children - Melina, Leonie, Sophie, Timo and Luca - were killed in September 2020. Prosecutors said their mother first sedated the youngsters and then either drowned or suffocated them, dpa reported. The children ranged in age from 1 to 8.
Prosecutors think a photo the woman's ex-partner sent showing him with a new companion prompted the killings. The mother had written back to the ex-partner that he would never see his children again, dpa reported.
Also Read: Crime drops around the world as COVID-19 keeps people inside
The woman sent a sixth child, her eldest, to stay with his grandmother before the killings. She then tried to kill herself by jumping in front of a train at the Duesseldorf railway station and suffered serious, but not life-threatening injuries.
AIIB to provide greater support for global green recovery, says senior executive
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) aims to drive the world's green economy and stands ready to support members' investments to achieve climate goals, a senior executive has said.
Speaking to Xinhua during the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland, Sir Danny Alexander, the AIIB's vice president for policy and strategy, said the bank plans to align all its operations with the targets of the Paris Agreement by July 1, 2023.
Alexander stressed it's critical that the COP26 summit achieves big steps forward in terms of global commitments to actions on climate change, adding that it is already happening.
The AIIB began operations in Beijing in 2016 and has since grown to 104 approved members worldwide. It is capitalized at 100 billion U.S. dollars and rated Triple-A by the major international credit rating agencies.
READ: Kewatkhali bridge project to get $260 mn from AIIB
"For AIIB as a multilateral institution, we stand ready to work with all of our member countries to support their investments to help achieve these crucial global goals......and we look forward to making a contribution to this global goal," Alexander said.
He also highlighted that green investment is a crucial part of the economic recovery in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Projects now have to "be able to be adapted and resilient to climate change in the future," the executive continued, adding that "climate change adaptation, making sure that people are protected from flooding, storms and so forth, is going to be a major demand for infrastructure in the years to come."
READ: AIIB approves $260 million loan for Mymensingh bridge
By 2025, 50 percent of AIIB's financing will be climate finance, he added, referring to things such as renewable energy, which is "a huge issue for many societies in Asia."
Leaders vow to protect forests, plug methane leaks at COP26
World leaders promised to protect Earth’s forests, cut methane emissions and help South Africa wean itself off coal at the U.N. climate summit Tuesday — part of a flurry of deals intended to avert catastrophic global warming.
Britain hailed the commitment by over 100 countries to end deforestation in the coming decade as the first big achievement of the conference in the Scottish city of Glasgow, known as COP26 — but experts noted such promises have been made and broken before.
The U.K. government said it has received pledges from leaders representing more than 85% of the world’s forests to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. Among them are several countries with massive forests, including Brazil, China, Colombia, Congo, Indonesia, Russia and the United States.
More than $19 billion in public and private funds have been pledged toward the plan.
“With today’s unprecedented pledges, we will have a chance to end humanity’s long history as nature’s conqueror, and instead become its custodian,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said. “Let’s end this great chainsaw massacre by making conservation do what we know it can do, and that is deliver long-term sustainable jobs and growth as well.”
Read: At COP26, over 100 countries pledge to end deforestation
Experts and observers said fulfilling the pledge will be critical to limiting climate change, but many noted that such grand promises have been made in the past — to little effect.
“Signing the declaration is the easy part,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said on Twitter. “It is essential that it is implemented now for people and planet.”
Alison Hoare, a senior research fellow at political think tank Chatham House, said world leaders promised in 2014 to end deforestation by 2030, “but since then deforestation has accelerated across many countries.”
Brian Rohan, head of forests at environmental law charity ClientEarth, said that to succeed, the pledge “needs teeth.”
Forests are important ecosystems and provide a critical way of absorbing carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas — from the atmosphere. But the value of wood as a commodity and the growing demand for agricultural and pastoral land are leading to widespread and often illegal felling of forests, particularly in developing countries.
“We are delighted to see Indigenous Peoples mentioned in the forest deal announced today,” said Joseph Itongwa Mukumo, an Indigenous Walikale and activist from Congo.
He called for governments and businesses to recognize the effective role Indigenous communities play in preventing deforestation.
“These are billions in investment towards environmental preservation, but it’s very difficult for this money to reach Indigenous communities, reach traditional communities,” said Chief Ninawa, a leader of the Huni Kui people from the Amazon attending the summit.
Luciana Tellez Chavez, an environmental researcher at Human Right Watch, said the agreement contains “quite a lot of really positive elements.”
The EU, Britain and the U.S. are making progress on restricting imports of goods linked to deforestation and human rights abuses, “and it’s really interesting to see China and Brazil signing up to a statement that suggests that’s a goal,” she said.
But she noted that Brazil’s public statements don’t yet line up with its domestic policies and warned that the deal could be used by some countries to “greenwash” their image.
The Brazilian government has been eager to project itself as a responsible environmental steward in the wake of surging deforestation and fires in the Amazon rainforest and Pantanal wetlands that sparked global outrage and threats of divestment in recent years. But critics caution that its promises should be viewed with skepticism, and the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, is an outspoken proponent of developing the Amazon.
Read: COP26 must deliver a better future for everyone
At COP26, over 100 countries pledge to end deforestation
More than 100 countries were set to pledge Tuesday to end deforestation, which scientists say is a major driver of climate change.
Britain hailed the commitment as the first big achievement of the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow. But campaigners say they need to see the detail — such promises have been made, and broken, before.
The U.K. government said it has received commitments from leaders representing more than 85% of the world’s forests to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030.
Read: Hasina at COP26, gets warm welcome from Guterres, Boris
More than $19 billion in public and private funds have been pledged toward the plan, which is backed by countries including Brazil, China, Colombia, Congo, Indonesia, Russia and the United States.
Forests are considered important ecosystems and an important way of absorbing carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas — from the atmosphere.
But the value of wood as a commodity and the growing demand for agricultural and pastoral land are leading to widespread and often illegal felling of forests, particularly in developing countries.
Campaign group Human Right Watch cautioned that similar agreements in the past have failed to be effective.
Luciana Tellez Chavez, an environmental researcher at the group, said strengthening Indigenous people’s rights would help prevent deforestation and should be part of the agreement.
Alison Hoare, a senior research fellow at political think tank Chatham House, said world leaders promised in 2014 to end deforestation by 2030, “but since then deforestation has accelerated across many countries.”
“This new pledge recognizes the range of actions needed to protect our forests, including finance, support for rural livelihoods, and strong trade policies,” she said. “For it to succeed, inclusive processes and equitable legal frameworks will be needed, and governments must work with civil society, businesses and indigenous peoples to agree, monitor and implement them.”
About 130 world leaders are in Glasgow for the COP26 summit, which host Britain says is the last realistic chance to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — the goal the world set in Paris six years ago.
Read: COP26 begins with a mission to unite world
On Monday, the leaders heard stark warnings from officials and activists alike. Prime Minister Boris Johnson described global warming as “a doomsday device” strapped to humanity. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told his colleagues that humans are “digging our own graves.” And Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, speaking for vulnerable island nations, added moral thunder, warning leaders not to “allow the path of greed and selfishness to sow the seeds of our common destruction.”
Climate activist Greta Thunberg told a rally outside the high-security climate venue that the talk inside was just “ blah blah blah" and would achieve little.
“Change is not going to come from inside there,” she told some of the thousands of protesters who have come to Glasgow to make their voices heard. "That is not leadership, this is leadership. This is what leadership looks like.”
COVID-19′s global death toll tops 5 million in under 2 years
The global death toll from COVID-19 topped 5 million on Monday, less than two years into a crisis that has not only devastated poor countries but also humbled wealthy ones with first-rate health care systems.
Together, the United States, the European Union, Britain and Brazil — all upper-middle- or high-income countries — account for one-eighth of the world’s population but nearly half of all reported deaths. The U.S. alone has recorded over 745,000 lives lost, more than any other nation.
“This is a defining moment in our lifetime,” said Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious disease specialist at the Yale School of Public Health. “What do we have to do to protect ourselves so we don’t get to another 5 million?”
The death toll, as tallied by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the populations of Los Angeles and San Francisco combined. It rivals the number of people killed in battles among nations since 1950, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Globally, COVID-19 is now the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and stroke.
The staggering figure is almost certainly an undercount because of limited testing and people dying at home without medical attention, especially in poor parts of the world, such as India.
“What’s uniquely different about this pandemic is it hit hardest the high-resource countries,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, director of ICAP, a global health center at Columbia University. “That’s the irony of COVID-19.”
Wealthier nations with longer life expectancies have larger proportions of older people, cancer survivors and nursing home residents, all of whom are especially vulnerable to COVID-19, El-Sadr noted. Poorer countries tend to have larger shares of children, teens and young adults, who are less likely to fall seriously ill from the coronavirus.
India, despite its terrifying delta surge that peaked in early May, now has a much lower reported daily death rate than wealthier Russia, the U.S. or Britain, though there is uncertainty around its figures.
The seeming disconnect between wealth and health is a paradox that disease experts will be pondering for years. But the pattern that is seen on the grand scale, when nations are compared, is different when examined at closer range. Within each wealthy country, when deaths and infections are mapped, poorer neighborhoods are hit hardest.
In the U.S., for example, COVID-19 has taken an outsize toll on Black and Hispanic people, who are more likely than white people to live in poverty and have less access to health care.
“When we get out our microscopes, we see that within countries, the most vulnerable have suffered most,” Ko said.
Wealth has also played a role in the global vaccination drive, with rich countries accused of locking up supplies. The U.S. and others are already dispensing booster shots at a time when millions across Africa haven’t received a single dose, though the rich countries are also shipping hundreds of millions of shots to the rest of the world.
Africa remains the world’s least vaccinated region, with just 5% of the population of 1.3 billion people fully covered.
“This devastating milestone reminds us that we are failing much of the world,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a written statement. “This is a global shame.”
In Kampala, Uganda, Cissy Kagaba lost her 62-year-old mother on Christmas Day and her 76-year-old father days later.
“Christmas will never be the same for me,” said Kagaba, an anti-corruption activist in the East African country that has been through multiple lockdowns against the virus and where a curfew remains in place.
The pandemic has united the globe in grief and pushed survivors to the breaking point.
“Who else is there now? The responsibility is on me. COVID has changed my life,” said 32-year-old Reena Kesarwani, a mother of two boys, who was left to manage her late husband’s modest hardware store in a village in India.
Her husband, Anand Babu Kesarwani, died at 38 during India’s crushing coronavirus surge earlier this year. It overwhelmed one of the most chronically underfunded public health systems in the world and killed tens of thousands as hospitals ran out of oxygen and medicine.
In Bergamo, Italy, once the site of the West’s first deadly wave, 51-year-old Fabrizio Fidanza was deprived of a final farewell as his 86-year-old father lay dying in the hospital. He is still trying to come to terms with the loss more than a year later.
“For the last month, I never saw him,” Fidanza said during a visit to his father’s grave. “It was the worst moment. But coming here every week, helps me.”
Today, 92% of Bergamo’s eligible population have had at least one shot, the highest vaccination rate in Italy. The chief of medicine at Pope John XXIII Hospital, Dr. Stefano Fagiuoli, said he believes that’s a clear result of the city’s collective trauma, when the wail of ambulances was constant.
In Lake City, Florida, LaTasha Graham, 38, still gets mail almost daily for her 17-year-old daughter, Jo’Keria, who died of COVID-19 in August, days before starting her senior year of high school. The teen, who was buried in her cap and gown, wanted to be a trauma surgeon.
“I know that she would have made it. I know that she would have been where she wanted to go,” her mother said.
In Rio de Janeiro, Erika Machado scanned the list of names engraved on a long, undulating sculpture of oxidized steel that stands in Penitencia cemetery as an homage to some of Brazil’s COVID-19 victims. Then she found him: Wagner Machado, her father.
“My dad was the love of my life, my best friend,” said Machado, 40, a saleswoman who traveled from Sao Paulo to see her father’s name. “He was everything to me.”
Leaders dial up doomsday warning to kick-start climate talks
World leaders turned up the heat and resorted to end-of-the-world rhetoric Monday in an attempt to bring new urgency to sputtering international climate negotiations.
The metaphors were dramatic and mixed at the start of the talks, known as COP26. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson described global warming as “a doomsday device” strapped to humanity. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told his colleagues that humans are “digging our own graves.” And Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, speaking for vulnerable island nations, added moral thunder, warning leaders not to “allow the path of greed and selfishness to sow the seeds of our common destruction.”
Amid the speeches, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his coal-dependent country will aim to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by 2070 — two decades after the United States and at least 10 years later than China. Modi said the goal of reaching “net zero” by 2070 was one of five measures India planned to undertake to meet its commitments under the Paris climate accord.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel avoided soaring rhetoric and delved into policy.
“There’s no more time to sit back,” Biden said in a more measured warning that also apologized for his predecessor’s decision to temporarily pull the U.S. out of the historic 2015 Paris agreement, something he said put the country behind in its efforts. “Every day we delay, the cost of inaction increases.”
One of the United Nations’ biggest concerns is that some countries are more focused on amorphous long-term net-zero goals instead of seeking cuts this decade that could prevent temperature increases that would exceed the Paris goal.
Modi also outlined shorter-term goals for the world’s third-biggest carbon emitter: raising its goal for non-fossil energy production, meeting half of its energy needs with renewable sources, cutting carbon emissions by 1 billion tons compared with previous targets and reducing the carbon intensity of its economy by 45% — all by 2030.
While 2070 sounds far off for India’s pledge, four outside experts from think tanks and universities said India’s new short- and long-term goals are significant, while not huge, because of that nation’s development status. Ulka Kelkar, who directs India climate policy analysis for the World Resource Institute, said a lot depends on details, but the 2070 goal would be similar to the U.S. and Europe adopting net-zero goals 20 years ago.
Still, European officials privately expressed disappointment at India’s late target, but declined to comment publicly.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen touted already announced efforts to make Europe “the first net-zero continent” in the long-term and cut emissions 55% in this decade. She pushed for other rich countries to aid poorer nations as much as Europe does and put a price on carbon emissions because “nature cannot pay that price anymore.”
Bolivia President Luis Arce said the speeches from developed countries sought to portray them as climate change leaders “but this is far from the truth.” He said rich nations need to face their historic responsibilities for causing the warming problem and not fix it by forcing rules on poor countries. The real solution, he said, “is an alternative to capitalism” and “unfettered consumerism.”
Johnson pointed out that the 130-plus world leaders gathered for the leaders’ summit portion of the conference had an average age of over 60, while the generations most harmed by climate change aren’t yet born.
Outside the negotiations, youth climate activist Greta Thunberg accused world leaders of “pretending to take our future seriously.”
“Change is not going to come from inside there,” Thunberg said, “We say no more blah-blah-blah.”
The conference aims to get governments to commit to curbing carbon emissions fast enough to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). Current projections based on planned emissions cuts over the next decade are for it to hit 2.7C (4.9F) by the year 2100.
Increased warming over coming decades would melt much of the planet’s ice, raise global sea levels and greatly increase the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather, scientists say. With every tenth of a degree of warming, the dangers soar faster, they say.
The other goals for the meeting are for rich nations to give poor nations $100 billion a year in climate aid and to reach an agreement to spend half of the money to adapt to worsening climate impacts.
But Mottley, of Barbados, warned that negotiators are falling short.
“This is immoral and it is unjust,” Mottley said. “Are we so blinded and hardened that we can no longer appreciate the cries of humanity?”
“We are already gasping for survival,” chimed in President Wavel John Charles Ramkalawan of the Seychelles, another island nation. “Tomorrow is not an option for it will be too late.”
Guterres struck an equally gloomy note.
“We are digging our own graves,” said the U.N. secretary-general. “Our planet is changing before our eyes — from the ocean depths to mountaintops, from melting glaciers to relentless extreme weather events.”
The speeches will continue through Tuesday, then the leaders will leave.
The idea is that they will do the big political give-and-take, setting out broad outlines of agreement, and then have other government officials hammer out the details. That’s what worked to make the historic 2015 Paris climate deal a success, former U.N. Climate Secretary Christiana Figueres told The Associated Press.
“For heads of state, it is actually a much better use of their strategic thinking,” Figueres said.
G20 make commitments on climate neutrality, coal financing
Leaders of the world’s biggest economies made a compromise commitment Sunday to reach carbon neutrality “by or around mid-century” as they wrapped up a two-day summit that was laying the groundwork for the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
According to the final communique, the Group of 20 leaders also agreed to end public financing for coal-fired power generation abroad, but set no target for phasing out coal domestically — a clear nod to coal-dependent countries including China and India and a blow to Britain which had hoped for more solid commitments ahead of the Glasgow meeting.
The Group of 20 countries represent more than three-quarters of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and summit host Italy had been looking for solid targets on how to reduce emissions while helping poor countries deal with the impact of rising temperatures.
Without them, momentum could be lost for the larger annual talks that officially opened Sunday in Glasgow and where countries from around the globe will be represented, including poor ones most vulnerable to rising seas, desertification and other effects.
Italian Premier Mario Draghi told the leaders going into the final working session Sunday that they needed both to set long-term goals and make short-term changes to reach them.
Read: G20 leaders to tackle energy prices, other economic woes
“We must accelerate the phasing-out of coal and invest more in renewable energy,” he said. “We also need to make sure that we use available resources wisely, which means that we should become able to adapt our technologies and also our lifestyles to this new world.”
According to the communique, the G-20 reaffirmed past commitments by rich countries to mobilize $100 billion annually to help poorer countries cope with climate change, and committed to scaling up financing for helping them adapt.
The sticking point remained the deadline to reach carbon neutrality or “net zero” emissions, meaning a balance between greenhouse gases added to and removed from the atmosphere. Going into the summit Italy had all-but conceded it would only be able to secure commitments to reach net-zero emissions “by mid-century,” rather than a specific year.
According to the final communique, the G-20 leaders said they will “accelerate our actions across mitigation, adaptation and finance, acknowledging the key relevance of achieving global net zero greenhouse gas emissions or carbon neutrality by or around mid-century.”
A French official said “mid-century” meant 2050 in the strict sense “but given the diversity of the G-20 countries ... it means everyone agrees to a common goal while providing a bit of flexibility to take into account national diversity.” Speaking on condition of anonymity, the French official cited top carbon polluters China and India, as well as Indonesia.
Some countries have set 2050 as their deadline for net zero emissions, while China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are aiming for 2060.
The future of coal, a key source of greenhouse gas emissions, has been one of the hardest things for the G-20 to agree on.
At the Rome summit, leaders agreed to “put an end to the provision of international public finance for new unabated coal power generation abroad by the end of 2021.”
That refers to financial support for building coal plants abroad, something Western countries have been moving away from and major Asian economies are now doing the same: Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at the U.N. General Assembly last month that Beijing would stop funding such projects, and Japan and South Korea made similar commitments earlier in the year.
The failure of the G-20 to set a target for phasing out domestic coal use was a blow to Britain, which had hoping there would be progress on the issue at COP26. The spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Max Blain, said the G-20 communique “was never meant to be the main lever in order to secure commitments on climate change,” which would be hammered out at the Glasgow summit.
He said the U.K. would continue to push for “ambitious commitments” on coal.
Youth climate activists Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate issued an open letter to the media as the G-20 was wrapping up, stressing three fundamental aspects of the climate crisis that often are downplayed: that time is running out, that any solution must provide justice to the people most affected by climate change, and that the biggest polluters often hide behind incomplete statistics about their true emissions.
Read: No pathway to reach the Paris Agreement’s 1.5˚C goal without the G20: UN chief
“The climate crisis is only going to become more urgent. We can still avoid the worst consequences, we can still turn this around. But not if we continue like today,” they wrote, just weeks after Thunberg shamed global leaders for their “blah blah blah” rhetoric during a youth climate summit in Milan.
Britain’s Prince Charles addressed the G-20 Sunday morning and urged leaders to listen to young people who are inheriting the warming Earth, warning that “it is quite literally the last-chance saloon.”
Charles, a longtime environmental activist, said public-private partnerships were the only way to achieve the trillions of dollars in annual investment needed to transition to clean, sustainable energy sources that will mitigate the warming of global temperatures.
“It is impossible not to hear the despairing voices of young people who see you as the stewards of the planet, holding the viability of their future in your hands,” Charles said.
G-20 leaders turn to climate change on last day of summit
Leaders of the world's biggest economies were set to tackle climate change Sunday, the final day of a weekend summit in Rome that is widely expected to set the tone for a major conference on the same issue taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, over the next two weeks.
The Group of 20 countries, which represent more than three-quarters of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, are looking for common ground on how to reduce emissions while helping poor countries deal with the impact of rising temperatures.
If the G-20 summit ends with only weak commitments, momentum could be lost for the larger annual talks in Glasgow, where countries from around the globe will be represented including poor ones most vulnerable to rising seas, desertification and other effects.
The future of coal, a key source of greenhouse gas emissions, has been one of the hardest things for the G-20 to agree on. However, the U.S. and other countries are hoping to get a commitment to end overseas financing of coal-fired power generation, said a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview President Joe Biden's plans.
Read: Earth gets hotter, deadlier during decades of climate talks
Western countries have moved away from financing coal projects in developing countries, and major Asian economies are now doing the same: Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at the U.N. General Assembly last month that Beijing would stop funding such projects, and Japan and South Korea made similar commitments earlier in the year.
China has not set an end date for building domestic coal plants at home, however. Coal is still China’s main source of power generation, and both China and India have resisted attempts for a G-20 declaration on phasing out domestic coal consumption.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said before the Rome summit that he tried but could not get a commitment on a coal phase-out from Xi, who did not travel to the gathering.
In Glasgow, Johnson said, “we want these leaders … to focus on the commitments they can make, moving away from the use of fossil fuels, moving away from coal-fired power stations domestically."
Climate campaigners were hoping that rich G-20 countries would take steps to meet a long-standing but yet-to-be-fulfilled commitment to raise $100 billion annually to help developing countries move toward greener economies and adapt to the changing climate.
Prince Charles, a long-time environmentalist, was set to address the G-20 on Sunday.
Read: ‘Everything is at stake’ as world gathers for climate talks
G-20 leaders also discussed the COVID-19 pandemic and the uneven distribution of vaccines in the world. On Saturday they endorsed a global minimum tax on corporations, a linchpin of new international tax rules aimed at blunting fiscal paradises amid skyrocketing profits of some multinationals.
And after a meeting on the sidelines about Iran's nuclear program, Biden, Johnson, Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron made a joint statement expressing their “determination to ensure that Iran can never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon.”
They also voiced concern that Tehran “has accelerated the pace of provocative nuclear steps” after halting negotiations on a return to the nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.