At this rate, fossil awards will run out! Several countries awarded the Fossil of the Day again!
Bosnia and Slovenia rank first!
Slovenia wants to fund Bosnia’s coal addiction through Slovenian NLB Banka, partly owned by the government, and partly by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
That is unheard of! If your brother suffers from drug addiction, it’s not great to offer him money to buy more drugs.
World leaders are gathering here in Madrid to address climate change by cutting emissions, primarily through coal and other fossil fuels phase-out. As Europe prepares to pledge to be the first climate-neutral continent, it is shameful that Europe’s banks work in the opposite direction!
The second fossil award goes to Australia! Again!
Australia evades its responsibility as a wealthy nation and major climate polluter. It fails to do its fair share to assist Indigenous Peoples in less developed countries (LDCs) in the face of catastrophic climate impacts. And now Australia has used the vulnerability of First Peoples to claim that we need to; ‘break down the developed/developing country divide’! This would give Australia the same financial responsibility for climate action as, for example, Timor Leste, Vanuatu, Tuvalu or Bangladesh. THIS IS DISGRACEFUL!
The truth is – First Nations peoples are the original sovereign first peoples.
In their words: we are at the front line of many injustices, including climate change. We are at the front line of climate impacts, despite being the least responsible.
This is true whether our sovereign lands are in developed or developing countries.
Australia is breaching our human and Indigenous rights. First Peoples don’t separate our livelihoods from our environment, our culture, or our climate.
The third fossil award goes to Belgium!
While Europe is taking a leading role in the climate crisis, Belgium is lagging behind on every target. The new Flemish minister of environment proposes ‘plane-pooling’ – genuinely, a term she invented herself. This is proposed as a good environmental option for getting to the COP! This means she is NOT going by private jet, but will fly on a plane that has ‘normal’ passengers as well, and is ‘as full as possible’. This doesn’t seem like a minister who takes the climate crisis seriously…
Belgium will miss its 2020 targets, and there is no good news about 2030 either. The plan that was presented to the European Commission last year has too weak targets, no clear policies to reach them, and a total lack of integration. This may, in part, be because Belgium has four governments that need to agree on climate action! Maybe they could train-pool to come up with a better plan!
And did you think that they were all about 2050? Forget it! Up until now, Belgium does not even seem to have a clear position on European climate neutrality in 2050. Yes, you heard that right. Even though the IPCC said that that would be the date that the WORLD needs to be climate neutral if we are to achieve the Paris goals. Did they think the EU as a major historic emitter needs to do less than the rest of the world? Their chance to provide clarity is next week, when the EU council will vote on just this issue.
Oh and one more thing… Belgium has been announcing everywhere that they will double their contribution to the Green Climate Fund. Nice, but, without a number, we don’t really know what they are talking about. Because, yet again, did we mention that there are four governments that need to decide this…? Could they maybe also clarify that before the end of the COP? That would be great!
So yeah, a deserved fossil at this so-called ‘blue COP’, where we talk about the ocean. You know, that thing that is rising and will flood the Belgian coast by the end of the century if we keep going like this… Congratulations, Belgium!