USA wins Colossal Fossil award at COP27 for block and delay on Loss and Damage Finance, Dishonourable mentions to Russia and Bolsanaro's Brazil

The USA wins the Colossal Fossil COP27 award for continuing to block and delay the creation of a Loss and Damage Fund in the negotiations. This needs to be called out loudly. Vulnerable countries are already experiencing high levels of climate disasters that affect economic recovery. This problem is only growing. A Loss and Damage fund is greatly needed to cope with escalating damages from heatwaves and drought, torrential rain and flood events, cyclones, and the long slow impact of sea level rise.

Dishonourable mentions to Russia for using COP27 for fossil fuel and nuclear lobbying, and to Bolsanaro's Brazil and the damage done with escalating emissions and levels of deforestation of the Amazon.  

Australia, Captain of the Fossil Fueled Five, wins Colossal Fossil of COP26

Australia wins Colossal Fossil Award of COP26 - Jo Dodds accepts award

Loss and damage is very real even for first world people in Australia. After the Black Summer bushfires there are still people living in tents two years later, while a bushfire recovery fund remains entirely unspent. This is the same arrogance that Australia has treated our first nation people since invasion and colonisation, and our Pacific neighbours who have pleaded for Australia to step up on climate action, phase out of coal, and fund loss and damage in our region.

Australian really is at this time the unrepentant captain of the Fossil Fueled Gang of Five and well deserves the Colossal Fossil award of COP26.

This is Australia's shame, especially disturbing given the abundant renewable energy resources, and the deep knowledge of indigenous people from 60,000 to 80,000 years of experience of land management and culture. Our First Nation peoples have already experienced climate change and sea level change on our continent, and have embedded knowledge of these changes within dreamtime stories that can provide insight to transition.

Jo Dodds, President of Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action, accepted the award for Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Energy Minister Angus Taylor.

#FossiloftheDay is back baby https://t.co/5WvwAouCPw

— Isabel Baudish (@IsabelBaudish) November 12, 2021

5 Year Fossil Awards - the Paris Agreement Five years on and Australia

It's been five years since the UNFCCC climate conference in Paris in 2015. Five years of annual conferences. Five years of Fossil of the Day awards at those conferences. The year of pandemic has thrown a curve ball to annual negotiations with COP26 due to be held in Gasgow right now delayed to 2021.

Nations have continued to push ambition even during this pandemic year. Co-convened by the United Nations, the United Kingdom and France, and in partnership with Chile and Italy, have decided to hold a Climate Ambition Summit, a digital event.

The Climate Action Network provided its own alternative Fossil of the 5 years special event too.

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Official citation

11 December 2020: Five years after the Paris Agreement, countries continue to outdo each other at being best in doing the worst to fight the climate crisis. But some are always better than others (hint: surprise they haven’t been invited to the Paris Agreement Birthday Party).

Through a fair and democratic voting process (that required no recounts), Climate Action Network, the world’s largest network of 1,300 civil society organisations working on climate change in over 130 countries, chose the USA as the overall winner of the Colossal Fossil of Five Years to mark the 5th Anniversary of the Paris Agreement. USA also won a second Fossil Award for Not Providing Finance and Support. Australia won a Fossil Award for Not Honoring the 1.5°C Commitment, and Brazil won two Fossil Awards for Not Protecting People from Climate Impacts and Not Listening to the People and Shrinking Civic Space.

USA: Colossal Fossil of Five Years

Let’s be honest, the USA has never been the loudest cheerleader for climate action. In some ways President Trump simply said the quiet parts aloud. ‘America First’ has always been the north star guiding the US’ official line in international climate talks, like when verbally bulldozing proposals for climate compensation and finance for Loss and Damage to vulnerable countries, arm-twisting poorer nations into accepting weak climate targets from rich countries and flexing their diplomatic muscle to break or make deals, all the while with handshakes and smiles. Until….2016.

A Colossal Fossil of Five Years can never capture the depths of ineptitude and damage of the Trump years: from amplifying climate denialism, to dismantling domestic environmental policies to undermining progress in multilateral spaces like the UNFCCC, the IPCC, the G20 & G7 and the GCF.

USA: Fossil for Not Providing Finance and Support

In the Trump years, the USA has been particularly stingy on finance for climate action. Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement was bad enough but the USA used its bully pulpit to obstruct finance to developing countries. By ceasing all finance to the Green Climate Fund (inspiring other countries like Australia) it deprived millions of people in poor countries critical resources to adapt to the climate crisis. Funding to the IPCC was also summarily halted, unsurprisingly some might say, by an anti-science administration.

So when it comes to climate change, ‘America First’ only means the USA’s outsized lead as the largest historical carbon emitter. To be clear, this is not a fossil award to the American people. We salute them for voting out a climate denier! Polls consistently show Americans want a climate-safe future and President-elect Biden must act on this mandate. He must take a seat at the international table and ensure the US does its fairshare on cutting its domestic emissions drastically by 2030 and substantially increasing international finance. Rejoining the Paris Agreement and recommitting money to the Green Climate Fund will be the starting steps in this new journey. It is time for the wealthiest nation to put the planet and all its people first.

Australia: Fossil for Not Honoring the 1.5°C Commitment

Before Scott Morrison became Australian Prime Minister, he once brandished a lump of coal in parliament. That was in 2017, when he accused his opponents of having a “pathological fear of coal”. A few short years later, the only pathological behaviour remains his government’s ongoing infatuation with fossil fuels when the rest of the world has moved on. As the largest exporter of coal and gas, Australia’s federal government has done virtually nothing over the past five years to tackle the climate emergency. The government's woefully inadequate 2030 Paris Agreement target is in line with a catastrophic 3°C rise. And it has tried to cheat by using carryover credits from the Kyoto Protocol to meet around half of it. The Australian government has refused to set a national long term target (net zero by 2050)despite every State and Territory of Australia having now set a long term net zero climate target. Australia’s current emission reduction trend will reach net-zero in 300 years! And to top it all, Australia has withdrawn funding entirely from the Green Climate Fund.

The world watched swathes of Australia's bush burn last summer contributing to significant biodiversity loss and impacting the most vulnerable people. Besides stinking up the planet, Australia appears to be reneging on acommitment to net zero emissions made to Pacific Island Neighbours in October 2019. How does Australia face its Pacific Island neighbours, many of whom will be displaced in the next two-to-three decades unless we scale up efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C? Australia must get sensible fast otherwise the Morrsion government is staring at a dark legacy of climate inaction. Will future generations have to view plastic replicas of the Great Barrier Reef in a museum of climate horrors alongside stuffed mounts of the critically endangered Mountain Pygmy Possum?

Brazil: Fossil for Not Protecting People from Climate Impacts

An alarming climate tipping point could happen much sooner than expected when the dense, green canopy of the Amazon rainforest turns into a dry open savannah, an irreversible process that is being hastened by increasing fires and logging. The policies of “Chainsaw” Bolsonaro have ensured that the ‘"Cooler of the Planet"’ is now a scarred, choking mess. This year’s fires are among the worst in ten years with a 14% increase in fires compared to the already catastrophic figures from last year. The world’s largest tropical wetland, the Pantanal, was consumed by flames this year, wrecking the lives of Indigineous communities there and all its biodiversity. Things look grim in Brazil as Bolsonaro offers concessions to agribusiness and mining magnates, turns his back on Indigenous communities and repeatedly denies climate change. Just to prove the point, Brazil has pledged over 70% of funding under its existing energy plan to fossil fuels and has extended subsidies to offshore oil exploitation until 2040!

Brazil: Fossil for Shrinking Civil Space

Despite tough competition from Russia, Brazil was voted for a fossil for its escalating crackdown on civil society groups resisting its regressive policies and fighting for the rights of Indigenous communities. A leaked document shows Brazil’s military plans to control “100% of NGOs working in the Amazon” and is set to advance policies to starve NGOs of funding. It is no wonder that Brazil ranks number three in the world for the murder of environmental defenders. "Civil society, despite being threatened in Brazil, must strengthen itself to pressure, nationally and internationally, for effective emission reduction measures, to preserve our forests and protect Indigenous Peoples", said Nayara Castiglioni Amaral, general coordinator of Engajamundo, a Brazilian youth organization.

Watch the whole ceremony:

About the fossils: The Fossil of the Day awards were first presented at the climate talks in 1999, in Bonn, initiated by the German NGO Forum. During United Nations climate change negotiations (www.unfccc.int), members of the Climate Action Network (CAN), vote for countries judged to have done their 'best' to block progress in the negotiations in the last days of talks.

About CAN: The Climate Action Network (CAN) is a global network of over 1,300 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in more than 120 countries working to promote government and individual action to limit human0induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels. www.climatenetwork.org

Brazil wins Colossal Fossil Award at COP25 for Amazon deforestation, land grabbing

The UN climate conference is scheduled to finish on Friday December 13, but almost certainly it will not, held to ransom in particular by a few countries doing much of the blocking. Those countries include Australia, USA and Brazil.

The Final day of COP is the day when Climate Action Network award the Colossal Fossil award for being the worst of the worst./ While Australia was leading the tally scoreboard for daily Fossilof the Day Awards, by acclimation the Climate Action Network decided to use it's perogative and and appoint another country, although one that has been given Fossil awards at COP25. Step forward Brazil. A country that has been doing an extrarordinary amount of blocking in the negotiations in the climate conference, but also a country reversing gains that have been made in previous years with allowing more land grabbing, deforrestation f the Amazon disrupting indigenous communities, and allowing the murder of environmental defenders.

The one light of the day, highlighted by a Ray of the Year award, is the continuing resistance by indigenous people from the Amazon to Australia against fossil fuel extractivism and land clearing, upholding traditional culture and knowledge and environmental integity. Similarly, the youth uprising with Fridays for Future and climate strike provides a measure of hope in action.

Poland wins Colossal Fossil award of #COP24, while Pacific nations provide a Ray of Light

No surprises here that host Country Poland has received the Colossal Fossil Award of COP24 for it's behaviour incongruent with a climate change conference, including continuing emphasis on coal development, and coal company sponsorship of the COP.

What was even more concerning was the security legislation passed early this year, and it's by Polish authorities to deny entry and/or deport at least 12 members of civil society groups due to attend the UN climate talks in Poland.

Note the Amnesty International report on Poland: Arrests and Refusal of entry to environmentalists during the COP24 climate talks, which documented that at least 13 staff members and activists of environmental organizations were refused entry to Poland during the UN Conference on Climate Change, COP24, held in Katowice. In addition, three staff members of environmental organizations were questioned in their hotels about their IDs by the border police in Katowice. Two of them were arrested and detained for 12 hours.

Some consolation was provided by the awarding of a Ray of the Day, actually a Ray of the COP to Pacific Island Developing nations, specifically Vanuatu, Cook Islands, Samoa, Tuvalu, Fiji, Maldives, Tuvalu for stepping up in this pivotal moment in history (unlike some countries Cough Cough Australia.)

The official Award commendations from Climate Action Network International: