Glasgow – At the start of the World Climate Conference in Glasgow this Sunday, climate activists call for greater speed and ambition in the fight against the impending climate catastrophe.

Neubauer: “Knowingly stealing prospects”

None of the wealthy industrial nations, including Germany, is currently meeting their commitments to climate protection, said Luisa Neubauer of the German press agency’s Fridays for Future environmental movement. “All of them knowingly rob the global South and younger generations of their perspectives. Where are the governments that are putting an end to this fraud? ”The 25-year-old asked.

Six years have passed since the landmark Paris climate protection agreement in 2015, and greenhouse gas emissions that damage the climate are now higher than ever, he denounced. “This conference has to be the time when this trend is reversed.” The activist, who is also a member of the Greens, announced that she would travel to Glasgow with hundreds of fellow campaigners.

25,000 arrive

In Glasgow, at the invitation of the United Nations, government representatives from around 200 countries spent two weeks discussing how humanity can still contain accelerating global warming to a tolerable level. Around 25,000 people are expected to arrive, including thousands of journalists and climate protection activists.

Environmental associations and the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, had previously criticized the fact that in the two years since the last UN conference in Madrid, many states had not sufficiently adjusted their plans for climate protection. and they had delayed the necessary rapid phase-out of coal, oil and gas. Man-made warming of the atmosphere through greenhouse gases is already ensuring extreme weather increases. Some examples are the recent floods in Germany, the drought in the Sahel area in Africa, or the devastating wildfires in California and Russia.

Climate is also a problem in the G20

The fight against the climate crisis is also a theme in Rome on Sunday at the summit of the heads of state and government of the G20 group. Two top heads of state are not there, and they are also missing in Glasgow earlier this week: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin did not travel, officially due to the crown pandemic. China is the largest producer of greenhouse gases that damage the climate, while Russia’s economy is based on the export of gas and oil.

In Glasgow there were the first protests by climate protection activists: members of the Ocean Rebellion lay half-naked under fishing nets near the River Clyde as “men of the dead sea” to draw attention to the dangers of marine life such as dolphins, sharks and whales . Thousands of activists who went to Glasgow on foot, including those from Germany, should also arrive on Saturday. A Spanish group took the ferry to Portsmouth in southern England and walked across Britain for 30 days from there.

Paris goals are lost

The earth has already warmed about 1.1 degrees compared to the pre-industrial level; in Germany it is already 1.6 degrees. In Paris, six years ago, the international community agreed to limit global warming to a maximum of two degrees, preferably 1.5 degrees. So far, the plans put forward by the states are not close enough.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had also denounced the glaring deficits in the fight against global warming and urged the international community to catch up. “Humanity as a whole is 1: 5 behind at halftime,” Johnson said Saturday on the flight to the G20 summit. “We have the opportunity to equalize, to save position, to come back, but it will take a lot of strength,” he said after media reports.

Johnson makes a comparison with the Roman Empire

Faced with insufficient commitments from the vast majority of states on climate protection, Johnson turned to history. “When something goes wrong, it can go wrong at an extraordinary rate,” he said. “You saw that with the fall of the Roman Empire, and I’m afraid that if we don’t manage to fight climate change, we could see our civilization and our world collapse.”

Other important issues in Glasgow are trade between countries that have made progress in protecting the climate and financing the damage and losses caused by global warming, especially in the poorest countries.