The Earth's Corr at COP29 in Baku

I’ve been stalking the halls of COP29 in Baku Azerbaijan for almost a week now and the one huge thing that strikes me is that there are no voices here highlighting what Northern Ireland is facing.

In recent days I’ve heard from people from the Republic of Ireland, which is miles ahead of us and has a huge presence here, as well as other far flung places like Ghana, Nepal, Brazil, Peru, the Caribbean and a range of small island states that face being swallowed by the sea.

Many of them have horror stories to tell about people losing their homes and lands to fossil fuel and mining interests, as well as the rising numbers of disasters sparked by climate chaos like the melting Himalayas flooding communities below.

While the worst we’ve had had to contend with back home in Northern Ireland because of the climate crisis is the rising cost of just about everything - including food, oil and gas - but we’ve also seen some of our towns flooded and businesses left out of pocket because we simply aren’t ready for what’s to come.

While I listen to people here talk about how their communities are facing an onslaught of fossil fuel and other environment harming development, I can’t help but think of those back home fighting gas caverns in Islandmagee, a major new oil terminal at Cloghan Point and miners eyeing up the gold beneath the Sperrins as well those around Lough Neagh, Belfast Lough and so many more.

Who is speaking for all of them at these talks?

Yes we are represented by the UK Government here and when Keir Starmer flies in with his major and rather commendable announcement of a new emissions cut target of 81% by 2030 - but what does that mean for the people of NI?

We’re already failing to meet the original targets, have no climate action plan in place and little money to deliver anything like the major transport shakeup pushed by the Greens in Ireland’s government.

I have so many questions abut this 81% and how it will impact Ireland - and after asking much earlier this week for an answer, I’m still waiting for Ed Miliband to tell me how it will work.

No matter which way you look at it, we’re treated like a very poor cousin of both GB and Ireland who are so much further forward than us on climate action and have so much more money to deliver the projects and plans needed to protect and prepare their people for what’s to come.

I’ve reported in the past how we are the last place among our islands where people can’t get a grant to put in a heat pump, which would slash their heating bills and future proof their home.

Our people also earn the least money of any parts of these islands yet probably have the most expensive public transport.

Our loughs are being poisoned by pollution from agriculture - which is also our biggest climate polluter - and sewage from NI Water as well as a few much smaller sources.

But there’s little money to fix it.

It also feels to me like Northern Ireland has become a pollution sacrifice zone in terms of food production, which is adding massively to our carbon footprint and the nutrients poisoning our lands, rivers, lakes and sea.

But when the world comes together to talk about the impacts of climate on their communities, I see no one from the many impacted communities in NI here sharing their stories.

And believe me when I tell you, what they have to say is not that different than what people from the Amazon rainforest tell me they are facing when oil prospectors eye up the oil beneath it, or a mum who carried her baby from Ghana to Azerbaijan to say ‘my son’s future is at stake’.

Adjoa Kesse-Sam says children in her country are going without nutritious food because of the climate crisis which is causing further poverty and food price hikes.

Are we too not seeing families in NI facing rising poverty, rising food prices and rising hunger with more and more families turning to ultra processed food to fill their kids tummies as that’s all they can afford.

It’s not right no matter what country you hail from, or whether its considered developed or developing.

Then you have the communities fighting projects and plans that could lock NI in decades more fossil fuels when everyone with an ounce of sense is telling world leaders and governments to stop taking fossil fuels out of the ground.

I mean, it’s not like they haven’t amassed trillions in public subsidies and profits to kill the planet, while the world’s poorest pay the price.

They have plenty in the bank already - and could make the move to renewables only - if they weren’t so damn greedy.

But that right there is the problem at the heart of this all - greed and power.

And it seems to me, that with 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists lurking in the shadows of COP29 meetings and negotiations - some of whom were invited by the UK Government - they are ready to give any of that up any time soon.

They just got their carbon market - and it doesn’t look like there’s any appetite from world governments to stop giving them trillions in public money as subsidies and tax breaks.

So why would they give up their golden goose when governments all over the world are doing all they can to feather its nest.

I’m with the hundreds of activists making their calls for those polluters to pay heard here in Baku.

It’s time they repaid the huge debt they owe humanity and every other species on Earth.

It’s not their just world - and they shouldn’t get to destroy it for all of us - just to make a few trillion bucks.

The madness has to stop.

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