This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
The 30th U.N. Climate Summit is beginning today in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belém, in the mouth of the Amazon River. Last week, many world leaders gathered in advance for a two-day summit. This is Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA: The Climate Convention returns to the country where it was born. Today, the eyes of the world turn to Belém with immense expectation. For the first time in history, a Climate COP will take place in the heart of the Amazon. In the global imagination, there’s no greater symbol of the environmental cause than the Amazon Rainforest.
AMY GOODMAN: Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said the world needs to do far more to help countries most impacted by the climate crisis, including those hit by Hurricane Melissa.
MIA MOTTLEY: Because all of us should hold our heads down in shame because having established this fund a few years ago in Sharm el-Sheikh, its capital base is still under $800 million, while Jamaica reels from damage in excess of $7 billion U.S., not to mention Cuba, Haiti, or the Bahamas.
AMY GOODMAN: Tuvalu’s Home Affairs and Environment Minister Maina Vakafua Talia criticized the Trump administration for not sending a high-level delegation to the Climate Summit.
MAINA VAKAFUA TALIA: Tragically, the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse-gas emission has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement. I was at the U.N. General Assembly when President Trump spent a considerable amount of his address to world leaders disparaging renewable energy sources and challenging the scientific consensus on climate change. Mr. President, this is a shameful disregard for the rest of the world. We only need to reflect on the recent impact of Hurricane Melissa that wreaked havoc on Jamaica and Cuba, and Typhoon Tino that hit the Philippines, to understand that climate change is here.
AMY GOODMAN: The Trump administration’s defended its decision to skip the Climate Summit. A White House spokesperson said, quote, “President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,” unquote. In one of his first acts in office, Trump began the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the landmark Paris Climate Agreement.
We begin today’s show in Belém with Yeb Saño, the former Chief Climate Negotiator for the Philippines. Over the weekend, a major typhoon hit the Philippines, killing at least eight people and displacing more than 1.4 million others. Typhoon Fung-wong hit as the Philippines was still recovering from another typhoon, which killed at least 224 people just last week. The Philippines has been hit by 21 major storms this year.
For Yeb Saño, this marks at least the third time he’s seen the Philippines hit by a deadly storm during the U.N. Climate Summit. This is Saño speaking in 2012 after a typhoon hit the Philippines. The storm killed almost 2,000 people.
YEB SANO: I appeal to ministers. The outcome of our work is not about what our political masters want, it’s about what’s demanded of us by 7 billion people. I people to all. Please, no more delays, no more excuses. Please, let Doha be remembered as the place where we found the political will to turn things around and let 2012 be remembered as the year the world found the courage to do so, to find the courage to take responsibility for the future we want. I ask of all of us here, if not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where? Thank you, Madam Chair.
AMY GOODMAN: In 2013, another typhoon hit the Philippines, as Yeb Saño appeared — attended at the U.N. Climate Summit in Warsaw.
YEB SANO: What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness. The climate crisis is madness. Mr. President, we can stop this madness right here in Warsaw.
AMY GOODMAN: At that summit Yeb Saño engaged in a hunger strike. Again, a Filipino negotiator. Yeb Saño joins us now from Belém, Brazil. He’s now the chair of the Laudato Si’ Movement, which was formally known as the Global Catholic Climate Movement. We welcome you back to Democracy Now!, Yeb. If you can talk about what has happened so far and why you’re there, why you’re in the gateway of the Amazon at this 30th Summit, what the significance of this summit is and the significance of one of the leading climate carbon gas emitters, the United States, not attending.
YEB SANO: Thank you, Amy. It’s a pleasure to be on the show again, always under difficult circumstances, as you have described. It is, of course, sobering to be here with the backdrop of another catastrophic event back home, back-to-back typhoons striking the Philippines, which, as you have just mentioned, has happened a couple of times before. And one is just too many.
Now, it is important for us to be here as a part of civil society. I think we cannot afford not to engage in a process which endeavors to find lasting solutions to avert a deepening crisis, a crisis that is being felt by many people and communities around the world, a crisis that is real, that is profoundly unfair, and that disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable and who had the least contribution in creating this problem.
And what is starkly unfair, of course, is not just the absence of the biggest historical emitter in the room, but also the disregard as we have heard from the Minister of Tuvalu, the shameful disregard of the lives of people around the world and, I would say, the unethical dismissal of the voices of people around the world who are clamoring for world leaders to actually do something about this crisis.
And that we find ourselves in the country where the Climate Convention was born 30 years ago, at the gateway of the Amazon, I agree that this is not just a symbolic part of the context of why COP30 is being held here, but I think the strength of the voices from indigenous communities, from local communities that are impacted by climate, by the climate crisis, as well as, for me, the context of the strength of faith communities, I consider this, Amy, being now chair of the Laudato Si’ Movement, as a critical juncture in our work to bring in all of the faith communities, considering that countries are dismally putting forward their nationally determined contributions that should spell out the ambition that is needed to confront the climate crisis. So, this is a very important gathering, of course, like before, but for us, this is a reckoning. It is a moral reckoning, COP30. It is.
AMY GOODMAN: What has changed since that 2013 speech we played a clip of when you were Chief Climate Negotiator for the Philippines at the Warsaw Summit? You went on a hunger strike then. This was 12 years ago.
YEB SANO: Well, a lot has changed. More particularly, the impacts that are being felt in many places around the world, especially people who are already struggling to make ends meet. A lot of radical things have changed in terms of their circumstances, in terms of our circumstances, where typhoons have become more intense, and the scientific basis for saying that typhoons are driven by a warmer world has become a lot more clearer now. And there’s, of course, a lot of things that have changed in terms of the global political leadership, if you can put it that way, if you can consider that as part of the worrying change in how many political leaders have abandoned their duty to have a higher ambition on climate.
Now, when we ask what else has changed around the regime on climate change, I can say that there are, of course, little steps that have been taken in the UNFCCC, in the Climate Convention, but if you ask me honestly, I think these are little steps and steps that are too little and probably too late, as we can see that the Paris Agreement’s implementation has become very difficult and has hit a lot of roadblocks along the way.
The can is being kicked down the road every year. There’s so much watering down of commitments, and there’s a lot of room to be improved in terms of how countries are working together to effect what President Lula has said is the imperative to strengthen multilateralism.
