COLUMBIA − Dozens of people rallied outside of Columbia City Hall to call for immediate action in global climate change.
The Mid-Missouri Peaceworks organized the rally. This is to address the group’s concerns and frustrations currently coming out of this year’s Conference of Parties (COP) that is being held at Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
COP is an annual meeting where world leaders gather together to convene, discuss and deliberate goals towards addressing global climate change.
Mid-Missouri Peaceworks director, Mark Haim, said the group is displeased with the ongoing lack of immediate change to emissions to help alleviate the impacts of global climate change.
“The conference of the parties is not taking responsibility for taking the kind of action we need to address the climate crisis,” Haim said. “This is a real climate emergency where we are seeing a lot of ‘business as usual’ thinking in a time when we need to be thinking about how are we going to solve this problem, and we are not addressing that in any realistic fashion.”
Mid-Missouri Peaceworks is calling for climate action that can meet the necessary goals laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including cutting greenhouse gas emission in half of this decade. The agenda includes:
- Addressing the Climate Emergency by phasing out fossil fuels as quickly as possible.
- Replacing fossil fuels with clean, green, affordable wind and solar power.
- Not allowing the fossil fuel industry hijack the COP.
- Saying “No!” to false solutions, including biomass, nuclear and carbon-capture.
- Saying “Yes!” to adequately funding the Loss & Damage Fund.
- Saying “Yes!” to serious funding for the transition to renewables in developing nations.
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Mid-Missouri Peaceworks is also unhappy with the lack of leadership coming out of the U.S. President Joe Biden did not attend the summit, but instead Vice President Kamala Harris joined.
Haim said putting temporary solutions like just lowering fossil fuel emissions and not having a plan to completely eliminate it is just putting a bandage on a wound that requires more serious attention down the line.
“We owe it to our kids, our grandkids and their kids and grandkids to deal with the problem and not kick the can down the road. We’ve done that too long…We can’t afford to do that, we have to take effective action and timely action now.”
Haim said taking action starts locally by applying pressure on elected officials to prioritize clean energy solutions.
This comes after recent controversy made by the head of COP28, Sultan al-Jaber, when he made comments against phasing out fossil fuels and claiming there was no scientific backing against fossil fuels promoting climate change.
Right now, world leaders are still trying to put together a deal on a plan to possibly phase out fossil fuel emissions. If a plan like this goes through, it would be unprecedented COP history.