By Orin Gordon
ONE thing we learn early in journalism is that stories of the rescue of cats stuck up trees have more punch in local markets in big countries, than stories of 25 people killed in a storm in Bangladesh. We don’t have to like it for it to be true.

People connect more with issues that feel closer to them. Politicians do too, because they’re accountable to their electorates and vulnerable to local conditions. This is why there needs to be a fundamental rethink of two of the central initiatives in the response to climate change – $100 billion a year from rich countries to poor, and taking the tough steps to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Rich countries’ governments are not sufficiently politically incentivised to give hundreds of millions of dollars to countries that their people and legislatures consider to be far away. Nor do some – like the Biden administration in the US – have the political wherewithal to take the tough steps to 1.5.

That’s even if the effects of climate change don’t respect borders. Even if their representatives looked ours in the eye and nodded in earnest agreement in Paris seven years ago, and in Glasgow – at COP26 – a year ago everyone is in the same boat. And the boat isn’t Noah’s Ark, built to transport the chosen out of flood danger. That boat is planet earth.

Nevertheless, those two initiatives have been increasingly shown to be unrealistic. There are accounting issues with that $100 billion, into which I’ll dive deeper in another conversation. There’s financial pressure from shrunken economic activity because of the COVID-19 pandemic, high gas prices and high grain prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a major global supplier of wheat.

The issue isn’t whether, collectively, the big, rich countries can afford it. They can. The figure wasn’t arrived at arbitrarily. It took years of careful, deliberative talks and negotiations between governments and institutions that support the climate change response. Unrealistic and unaffordable aren’t the same thing.

About the 1.5, The Economist didn’t pull punches in its leader that previewed COP27, this week’s climate summit at the Red Sea resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt.

“Many activists are reluctant to admit that 1.5°C is a lost cause. But failing to do so prolongs the mistakes made in Paris, where the world’s governments adopted a Herculean goal without any plausible plan for reaching it. The delegates gathering in Egypt should be chastened by failure, not lulled by false hope. They need to be more pragmatic, and face up to some hard truths”.

The Republicans are broadly opposed to any proposal on combating climate change. The executive and legislative leadership of the US haven’t sold most voters on the urgency of the proposals that would mitigate climate change. It’s not easy, but the simple fact is that they haven’t.

The well-intentioned and hardworking people leading on climate change mitigation need to rethink their approach. Many of them should spend less time in seaside, air-conditioned conference rooms and more time with people who have the power to move legislatures – voters.

Outside of them and specialist journalists, no one in my conversation circles in T&T is talking about the issues they’re discussing at Sharm. The World Bank is rolling out an initiative called SCALE, which it says is “the new partnership to catalyse transformative climate action”.

There’s more tortured language to explain it – I don’t have the space to relay it in full. But it’s strikingly badly communicated, and a failure to clearly engage the public.

What have we been talking about a lot recently? Rain and floods. Is there a nexus with climate change? The climate scientists say there is. Where is the aggressive public messaging that draws the line? Who is engaging coal miners in West Virginia, working with Manchin on laying out a vision for a post-coal future? You shift legislatures and governments by shifting voters. Too much of what is happening in Sharm looks like preaching to the converted.

We have tremendous advocates such as Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, a global force who gets engagement and can twist arms like few others can, and who has the gift of clarity. Guyana’s, Dr. Irfaan Ali is smart to use his country’s leverage, through its mostly unexploited rainforest. If you want the world to maintain its lungs, you have to pay the medical bill. In developing countries, we don’t have much leverage to compel funding.

Sharm needs Mottley. Is everyone who is there serving the cause as effectively as they could? Preaching has utility, but everyone can’t have a pulpit. You need other people to do the ushering, to clean the hall and to take the collection.