Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2025 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Climate Change

Grassroots at COP24 Demand end of Coal as Poland Lobbies for It

AFP 12/05/2018

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email

Campaign groups representing citizens from across the world demanded Tuesday that big energy leaves coal in the ground as COP24 host Poland pushed for protections allowing it to continue burning fossil fuel.

With nations locked in UN climate talks aimed at heading off runaway global warming, many parts of the world are already dealing with the storms, floods, fires and droughts our heating planet will suffer.

Man-made emissions have increased annually since the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord was struck and with political progress slowing, people who will bear the biggest burden issued their clearest plea to date: end fossil fuels now.

“The urgency of the climate crisis is very real on the ground because our people are suffering the different impacts of extreme weather,” said Lidy Nacpil, co-coordinator of the Asia Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development.

“Crops will be destroyed not just by flooding and rain but also by droughts. Yet this urgency is not reflected in the actions of governments,” she told AFP.

The People’s Demands (https://www.peoplesdemands.org/) initiative has been signed by nearly 300,000 people from over 120 nations.

It calls on richer states — who are responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions — to honour their promises to help fund at-risk countries to adapt to climate change, and developed economies to be fully green by 2030.

They also want a ban on fracking and an immediate, worldwide moratorium on new fossil fuel exploration and extraction.

The UN’s independent panel of climate experts in October issued its starkest findings yet: emissions from fossil fuels must be slashed by half within 12 years in order to hit the Paris goals of limited temperature rises.

But most Western economies remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

Poland, which gets roughly 80 percent of its electricity from coal, this week called for nations to weave measures into the UN climate framework that critics fear would allow it to keep polluting for decades.

President Andrzej Duda used his address at the COP opening Monday to say Poland’s dependence on coal “does not clash with climate protection and progress achieved in this vein”.

Duda reinforced his message on Tuesday with a speech to miners in the southern town of Brzeszcze, where he said he would not allow “anyone to murder Polish mining”.

He said while Poland was hosting the climate summit “we’re also there to speak the truth without taking into account political correctness, which is often driven by foreign interests and not Polish ones”.

Poland and other fossil-fuel reliant economies say they need a gradual and “just transition” towards renewables that protects miners and national energy security.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told officials at negotiations Tuesday that “the dialogue with industries is sometimes difficult and complex”.

“But we believe that even in the oil and gas industry, there is a growing conscience that the present trend is not sustainable.”

– ‘Detached from reality’ –

Paris committed countries to limiting temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) and to the safer cap of 1.5C if possible.

But a UN body warned last month that the gap between greenhouse gas emissions and levels needed to hit the Paris targets was bigger than ever before.


AFP / Janek SKARZYNSKI Coal workers in the Polish city of Katowice — host of crunch UN climate talks — celebrated the Day of St Barbara, patron saint of coal miners, on Tuesday.

Air pollution alone is now estimated to kill as many as nine million people every year.

“More and more communities are understanding the need to transform our energy systems and their immediate reason is they can see how damaging coal plants or oil drilling are,” said Nacpil.

“It’s becoming a popular cry that there has to be a swift transition away from these kinds of energy.”

Groups representing big energy are present at COP negotiations and environmentalists fear they may embolden nations to stick by old coal.

Jesse Bragg, of the Corporate Accountability group, told AFP fossil fuel influence at UN climate talks had “succeeded in making what goes on in those rooms very, very detached and different from the needs of the world.”

——-

Featured Photo: A general view of the industrial development near Algeciras, one of Europe’s most polluted places. The Spanish delegation will travel to the climate change summit in Katowice (Poland) to defend the need for more developed countries to make ‘more ambitious’ commitments than those set out in the Paris Agreement against Climate Change. On Friday, 30 November 2018, in Algeciras, Spain. (Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto) Artur Widak / NurPhoto

Filed Under: Climate Change

About the Author

AFP is a global news agency delivering fast, accurate, in-depth coverage of the events shaping our world from conflicts to politics, economics, sports, entertainment and the latest breakthroughs in health, science and technology. Headquartered in Paris, France, and founded in 1835, Agence France Presse is the third largest news agency in the world, after the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters. It has bureaus in 150 countries.

Primary Sidebar

Support Independent Journalism

Click here to donate via PayPal.

Personal checks should be made out to Juan Cole and sent to me at:

Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter to have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.
Warning! Social media will not reliably deliver Informed Comment to you. They are shadowbanning news sites, especially if "controversial."
To see new IC posts, please sign up for our email Newsletter.

Social Media

Bluesky | Instagram

Popular

  • Israel's Netanyahu banks on TACO Trump as he Launches War on Iran to disrupt Negotiations
  • Iran's Hypersonic Missiles Hit Israeli Refinery, Military Sites, as Israel does the same to Tehran
  • A Pariah State? Western Nations Sanction Israeli Cabinet Members
  • Why did Israel defy Trump – and risk a major War – by striking Iran now? And what happens next?
  • Will Iran reply to Israeli Attacks with "War of Attrition?" Will its Nuclear Red Line Hold?

Gaza Yet Stands


Juan Cole's New Ebook at Amazon. Click Here to Buy
__________________________

Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



Click here to Buy Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Click here to Buy The Rubaiyat.
Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2025 All Rights Reserved