CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

It’s Finally Happening!

Image courtesy of the Fossil Fuel Treaty.

The Santa Marta Conference – Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels – An energetic multi-nation well-organized effort to get off fossil fuels with the underlying motto: “Make Science Great Again”

This article discusses this exciting new approach to hopefully mitigate climate change as well a discussion of the steep difficulty of overcoming the “monumental challenge” already extant.

For example, it’s ironic that a major campaign to hopefully fix climate change (it’s finally happening #1) is initiated at the same moment as carbon sinks worldwide are breaking down (it’s finally happening #2), more on this frightening scenario to follow.

“The first conference on ‘transitioning away’ from fossil fuels was held in Santa Marta, Colombia, from 24-29 April saw 57 countries – representing one-third of the world’s economy – debate practical ways to move away from coal, oil and gas.” (Santa Marta: Key Outcomes from First Summit on ‘Transitioning Away’ From Fossil Fuels, Carbon Brief, April 30, 2026).

As it happens, the bloated planet can finally exhale after decades of stress and consternation and handwringing over its future following repeated failures of thirty (30) COP meetings (UN climate “Conference of the Parties”) to move the needle enough to effectively mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

For example, after 30 years of 50,000 to 100,000 people assembling for two weeks every year to discuss the problems of climate change, principally the result of too much CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, CO2 emissions are at all-time atmospheric highs, blanketing solar radiation heat that would otherwise reflect to outer space. This abnormality relentlessly drives the world thermometer to new highs.

After all, the planet does not want to fall into the trap of one more extinction event like the horrific Permian-Triassic known as “the Great Dying” 252 million years ago when approximately 90% of all species were eliminated. It took millions of years to recover, merging into the rambunctious Jurassic Period, part of the Mesozoic Era aka: Age of Reptiles, from 252 to 66 million years but abruptly disrupted and destroyed by a 12-mile-wide asteroid that hit ground in modern-day Mexico, wiping out approximately 80% of all species, followed by the Cenozoic Era or Age of Mammals with humans emerging out........

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