Annual conferences organized by UNFCCC to review climate actions like funding poor nations to cover loss and damage inflicted by global warming and transitioning away to green energy have not resulted in concrete actions. Rich nations responsible for the planet’s warming, are not paying any heed to the scientific advice and have not cut down oil, coal and gas burning. The hopes generated after the Paris Climate accord 2015 have been dashed. More than 40 gigatons of CO2 equivalent is being released into the atmosphere annually, and countries are plundering the environment for their self-interest.

Nations at war have been hitting each other’s oil depots and refineries using missiles and drones. The 40-day first phase attacks by US and Israel, and the response by Iran, have released 15,000 metric tons of explosives and made air, water and soil dangerously poisonous in the region. Marshall Burke, an environmental scientist at Stanford University, led a team that conducted a study, published in ‘Nature’ recently, which estimated that the US has caused $10 trillion damage to GDP across the globe due to its planet-heating emissions since 1990.

China is close behind and has caused a damage of $9 trillion in this period. A quarter of GDP dampening has occurred in the US itself. India has sustained damage of $500 billion in this period and Brazil of $330 billion. Poorer countries have undergone disproportionate economic losses. The action of Donald Trump in withdrawing from global climate treaties and permitting a ‘drill, baby, drill’ approach to oil and gas, and taking measures to hobble domestic clean energy projects, has led to the acceleration of the planet’s heating.

Frances Moore, an economist and social-cost expert, University of California, has endorsed the study and has cautioned that the weight of damage suffered by poorer countries is not fully accounted for, adding that the consequences of a poor person losing a dollar is more severe as compared to a rich person. At CoP30........

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