This Tuesday, President Nicolás Maduro called for concrete and immediate measures to be taken in the face of the current global climate crisis, and urged to have the courage to recognize that the cause of this crisis is the “consumer, voracious, predatory and destructive” capitalist system.
“It is time to rectify radically. Today it is the absolute collapse of the system that rises before us as a fatal destiny. Capitalism sees resources where other civilizations see life and that is why it takes the right to destroy what it finds in its path to accumulate capital”, warned the Venezuelan head of state before the audience of the XXVII Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
“A system that normalizes exploitation among human beings does not have the ethical conditions to respect other forms of existence,” Maduro warned. In this regard, he asserted that the main capitalist economies of the world have polluted and continue to pollute the planet for the benefit of a few.
“The time for speeches and also for laments has run out. There is only one present left to act radically and accurately in favor of another possible world »he said.
“We have wasted a lot of time, every hour, every month, every year of inaction, hesitation, indolence, today translates into destroyed ecosystems, extinct species and the deterioration of living conditions on the planet,” he reflected.
Climate Damage and Loss Financing Fund
Given this situation, President Maduro stressed that it is necessary to reach real and effective agreements, as well as to design a specific agenda to protect vulnerable populations affected by environmental damage.
In this regard, the president of Venezuela urged world leaders to establish without delay the Climate Loss and Damage Financing Fund.
From the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center, located in Egypt, he asserted that “humanity cannot remain an orphan”, so it is necessary to ensure that financial resources are distributed in a timely manner to those who suffer the devastating effects of the crisis. climate.
“We must work down to the last detail fine-tuning the mechanisms so that financial assistance is direct, fair, timely and expeditious, so that compensation for environmental damage reaches the most affected peoples,” he pointed out during his speech in the Segment High Level Conference of COP27.
The Head of State emphasized that any agreement must “attack the problem at the root and give priority to the most vulnerable on the planet.”
Environmental crisis and inequality
Continuing with his speech at COP27, the venezuelan president He compared the imbalance and the environmental crisis in nature with the conditions of inequality that capitalism creates against humanity, since “in addition to producing environmental misery, it produces social misery.”
In this regard, he highlighted the need to recognize civil failures in order to rectify radically, and warned that, if this self-destructive rate continues, in 30 or 40 years the planet will be uninhabitable.
In this regard, Maduro quoted the words of Fidel Castro Ruz at the Rio de Janeiro summit in 1992: “An important biological species is at risk of disappearing due to the rapid and progressive liquidation of its natural living conditions: man. Tomorrow it will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago. He commented that already 30 years ago he pointed to wild and predatory capitalism as the origin of the environmental crisis.
He also made reference to the words pronounced in 2009 in Copenhagen by Commander Hugo Chávez: “What is the cause of climate change, the cause is the dream of seeking happiness through material accumulation and endless progress, using to that techniques with which all the resources of the earth can be exploited in an unlimited way. Let’s not change the climate, let’s change the system!”
In this regard, he added that “at the Copenhagen Summit, the unwillingness of the negationist elites to advance the emergency at the appropriate pace and in the correct direction of life was revealed.”
irreversible fact
During his speech at COP27, President Nicolás Maduro stressed that the terrible environmental imbalances that today dramatically affect life all over the planet seem to indicate that climate change is an irreversible fact. A self-fulfilling prophecy, and the biggest environmental crisis since life existed.
“The dimension of this crisis does not take us by surprise. For 30 years there have been enough indications for an early warning », he said, referring to the Kyoto agreement which, in his opinion, gave good results until 2009.
He also recalled the 2015 Paris agreement, which made the contribution of science binding, as well as painful deadlocks and ruptures such as those of 2009 at the Copenhagen summit.
Referring to scientific projections, he warned that the climate crisis has consequences that force us to rectify the consumer model. If greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, the damage will be irreversible in just eight years.
He asserted on this that existence as we know it has been disrupted forever to the detriment of all living species on the planet.
Global warming is killing the species on earth; greenhouse gases reached the highest level in human history, 54% higher than in 1990; the rate of species extinction is accelerating; the sea level rises affecting fresh water and compromising the water resources of the planet.
He warned that as a consequence of these imbalances, extreme phenomena such as droughts and torrential floods increased in a disorderly manner.
Regarding this crisis, he pointed out that although human civilization is responsible, this responsibility is unequal. As an example, he commented that Venezuela is responsible for less than 0.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions on the planet, and lamented that the Venezuelan people must pay the consequences.
In defense of the Amazon
On the other hand, President Maduro advocated from the COP27 arena for the protection of the Amazon.
“It is the native peoples who must teach us how to save and how to live with nature. The original cultures of the entire American continent have always conceived of the earth and the jungle as a living being that thinks and feels like us”, he said.
In this sense, he urged to get out of the atropocentric arrogance that prevents seeing how sacred the world is.
He also made reference to the indefatigable spirit of struggle and resistance of Venezuelan men and women, and their immense love for life «which raises us to think of a new humanity, from a new spirituality, a humanity reconciled with nature, reconciled with itself, reconciled with the future.
“The illusion of infinitive development through consumerism has ended, let’s now put limits on the damage caused to mother nature,” he urged.
«Count the world with our people to unite all efforts for a new humanity!” Maduro emphasized.
On this second day of the High-Level Segment, in the context of this international forum, the Venezuelan President took the floor, to bring to this forum the voice of the peoples of the South, as he stated upon his arrival in Egypt.