Colombian President Gustavo Petro gave an impassioned speech at the opening ceremony of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) on October 20, which is being held in Cali, Colombia, until November 1.
Petro criticised the global financial system predicated on the extraction of fossil fuels and exploitation of countries of the Global South, which is driving planetary-wide climate catastrophes.
“Capital and profit have broken a delicate but fundamental existential balance: the climate.”
“Mass unemployment, unprecedented profits, climate destruction and the separation of humans from reality [nature?] are the ingredients for the end of life,” Petro said. “The accumulation of capital leads to the end of life.”
Petro highlighted the stark inequalities caused by the global capitalist system: “The world’s wealth is now concentrated in 1% of the planet’s population.”
Structural changes are needed to confront the climate crisis, Petro said.
“Forcing capital into decarbonisation also implies a revolution, because we must immediately exit the neoliberal era, neoliberalism in all its forms. That is the integral paradigm shift needed to preserve life and humanity on the planet.”
“Those who think in world forums like this one that the free market will lead to the maximisation of wellbeing … are deluded,” Petro said.
“The freedom of the market does not lead to the maximisation of wellbeing; the market freedom they preach leads to maximum slavery. It binds life in chains, condemning it to disappear.”
Petro highlighted how debt crises in poor countries cripple their ability to undertake climate action, even though they are home to world’s most important carbon sinks.
“The biggest CO2 emitters into the atmosphere are fossil, oil, coal and gas economies — the powerful economies of the US, China and Europe — because they charge surcharges on interest rates to the countries that today can still absorb CO2 like sponges.”
Rich countries and the “mega-wealthy” are the most responsible for causing climate change, Petro said.
“It is the richest predators who must be taxed to eliminate carbon from production and consumption,” he said.
“With taxes on predatory mega-wealth, with the shift from debt to climate action, we move to new modes of production, to a different relationship between humans and production and wealth.”
The next day, Petro spoke again at the conference, concluding with a call for mass mobilisations in Colombia and across the world for climate action.
Petro criticised inaction after previous COPs, saying that declarations are rarely followed by action because “the most powerful countries simply do not have the will to fulfil them”.
Petro touched on the climate-fuelled megafires sweeping through the Amazon, and the role of rich countries in causing them.
“The Amazon rainforest is burning because the smokestacks of US, European and Chinese industries continue to spew out carbon dioxide.”
Petro highlighted the need for an agrarian reform in Colombia as a way of confronting the climate crisis and combating narcotrafficking. He said campesinos are forced to choose between poverty or producing coca, which requires deforestation that contributes to climate change.
“The climate crisis is not just a problem of science, it is not just a problem of planting trees here and there, it implies profound solutions in the world’s economy to stop using oil, coal and gas in the most powerful countries.”
Petro said that, beyond just a space for government representatives to meet, COPs are an opportunity to “build the great global network of organisations and peoples of the world that is capable of mobilising as humanity to stop the greed that is the great cause of the world’s climate crisis”.
“The time has come for humanity to mobilise, or we will be left without humanity.”
[Watch Gustavo Petro’s opening ceremony speech in Spanish here.]