Neubauer experiences COP27 as a "parallel universe" - Nabu has doubts about the 1.5 degree target

The German climate activist Luisa Neubauer gave a devastating testimony to the decisions of the World Climate Conference. "The decision plays today's victims of the climate crisis against tomorrow's victims of the climate crisis," said Neubauer after the agreement at the conference on Sunday morning in Sharm al-Sheikh.

The breakthrough to compensation payments for climate damage is "a very urgent success" for a minimum of justice. At the same time, it is cynical to help countries with damage and losses on the one hand "and on the other hand to decide something here together that will cause infinitely more damage and losses".

The international community did not manage to end fossil fuels, although a crisis caused by fossil fuels was discussed at the 27th climate conference, Neubauer continued. That has echoes of a "parallel universe". "If anyone was hoping that this is where the climate crisis would be resolved, we can announce that it is not. It's tough," she concludes.

With activists from all over the world, the 26-year-old had called for more ambitious resolutions during the two-week conference with demonstrations and actions on the UN premises. Neubauer is convinced that without pressure from the streets, there would never have been a breakthrough in compensation payments for climate damage. "That's why the message goes out from this summit: activism works."

The agreement on the aid “reinforces all of us here in the belief that we can make a difference. And everything else in the statement also reinforces our need to make a difference.”

After the World Climate Conference, the German Nature Conservation Union (Nabu) expressed pessimism that the 1.5 degree target was still realistic.

It is "increasingly unlikely that the 1.5-degree limit decided in Paris can still be maintained," said Sebastian Scholz, head of climate protection at Nabu, WELT. “The states could not and did not want to agree on a reliable and binding phase-out path from fossil fuels. Germany, too, has presented itself as a bad example with its current gas buying spree.” The 1.5-degree target is about limiting the man-made temperature rise to 1.5 degrees worldwide, measured from the start of industrialization to 2100.

Scholz, who attended the climate conference in Sharm al-Sheikh, welcomed the decision on a fund for climate compensation payments. “This is a big step forward – it has been negotiated for 30 years. However, another marathon of negotiations is imminent with the structuring of the financing and access to this fund for damage and losses ."

Scholz' conclusion: "There are small rays of hope in natural climate protection. However, this climate conference does not send the hoped-for signal of departure towards the World Conference on Nature in Montreal.”