Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Patricia Espinosa , Executive Secretary United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , greet Felix Tshisekedi , President of DR Congo , at COP26 World Leaders Summit
COP 26 : This Time , Africa Must Not Accept Being Bullied
Bernard Sabiti
It is unfair to ask African countries to turn to expensive sources of ‘ green ’ energy when they barely have used any energy at all .
The UN Climate Summit , held last November in Glasgow , Scotland , claimed to “ bring together governments from around the world to agree coordinated action to tackle climate change .” And yet , like many of its predecessors ended with barely any concrete agreement in the stickiest of the issues : cuts to emissions of carbon dioxide ( CO2 ). As a result , countries will meet next year to pledge cuts to emissions of CO2 . Africa has always got a raw deal from most of these climate summits . The summits tend to put the continent under undue pressure to ‘ help ’ the world fight climate change by turning to green energy . However , it is unfair to ask African countries to turn to expensive sources of ‘ green ’ energy when they barely have used any energy at all , dirty or not , at a time when most regions of the continent are barely beginning their own industrial revolution that western nations went through 200 years ago .
On the one hand , rich countries account for only 12 % of the world population but are responsible for half of all the CO2 emissions over the past 170 years , according to the New York Times . The United States has , over this period , emitted the most carbon dioxide , totalling a quarter of all emissions . The Developed World ’ s ferocious industrialization craze , greed and reckless capitalism have set our beautiful planet onto a journey to becoming a hot stove . Yet , the consequences of that greed have
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