Lack of action at COP19 totally irresponsible

There are only a few hours left before the official closure of COP19 and still not any real sense of emergency.

The gap is clearly widening, not only between what is needed to achieve the goal of maintaining global warming below 2°C, but also between those who want to act and make real efforts and those who openly block or try and derail the UN process.

This is totally irresponsible. An assessment made by ����Climate Action Tracker���� shows that the negative developments at COP19 could well lead into a downward spiral in policies, a move towards a coal dependent economy and a re-carbonisation of the world energy system that would push us to a warming of five degrees!- a level of warming not seen on this planet for 55 million years and that could well happen in this century.

Governments that are trying to block or derail the process - most of them coming from the developed countries - are acting in an irresponsible manner. Not only do they not care about the terrible impacts of climate change in the most vulnerable countries and the pledges of their negotiators to stop wasting more time, they do not even care about their very own citizens!

The Polish government - instead of making use of all the possibilities to turn to a renewable energy based economy - stubbornly and foolishly continue to support energies that are the exact ones that led us to this chaos.  They let big polluting groups sponsor the COP (how would you feel if tobacco companies would sponsor a health summit?!!!), organised a coal summit while hosting the COP19 and, the icing on the cake, decided to replace their environment minister with a pro����shale gas missionary right in the middle of the second week of negotiations! The Australian Government, which is experiencing heat waves like it never experienced in recent history and who has parts of her territory literally burning, is pushing for an anti-climate agenda at home and is blocking any progress at the UN climate talks and finance in particular. 

Never ever have we had so many expertise and advice on what it is possible to do to face the climate challenge. What is missing is not another study reaffirming that climate change is happening but political will. Many developed countries say that they are not able to deliver the money because of the recession. However, there are still billions of dollars of subsidies given to fossil fuels each year  instead of investments into renewable energy sources. This is not acceptable anymore either. Some of the developed countries say that it is not possible to act against climate change in a time of recession. The truth is that this recession will get worse given the costs of inaction.

The EU now has only a few hours left to create a new dynamic and do its utmost to make sure that countries are no longer divided based on old rifts between the developed and the developing world. The EU can create a positive spiral by standing by its proposal on the roadmap of when and how countries will start making emission reductions and financial pledges and by delivering on the financing at this COP. The world will then have to spend the precious two years that are left to try and close another huge gap, the gap between science and political action, that in the meantime is only growing bigger and bigger.