US President Joe Biden travels to Egypt and Asia. He is expected to go to Cop27 on Friday before heading to the East Asia Summit in Cambodia and then the annual G20 in Indonesia. It will be interesting to see how this fuels the discussions. The important developments on Thursday were:
Khaled Ali, the lawyer of jailed hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah, said he went to the prison where his client was being held but was denied access to visit him. More than 50 of the poorest developing countries are at risk of defaulting on their debt and effectively going bankrupt unless the rich world offers urgent aid, the head of the UN development program said. There are a record number of fossil fuel lobbyists on the Cop this year. There are 600 of them, an increase of more than 25% on last year, outnumbering any frontline community affected by the climate crisis. Apparently, the protesters are not happy about this and have demanded that the “criminal” representatives of fossil fuels be removed from the Cop. A few UK politicians have been doing the rounds, with net zero czar Chris Skidmore suiting up for no less than six games. Business Secretary Grant Shapps was also there, answering questions about UK oil and gas exploration, and Cop26 chairman Alok Sharma spoke on a couple of panels. Our colleague Damian Carrington brought us two pieces of good news: firstly, that Israel, Lebanon and Iraq have worked together to reduce emissions, and that Norway is shutting down plans for a large oil field. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made some rather unusual comments in which she said Republican politicians think climate collapse is a “hoax”. Slovenia is the latest in a long line of European countries to abandon the Energy Charter Treaty, which gives energy companies the right to sue governments. Reporter Nina Lakhani spent much of the day with protesters wearing white in solidarity with murdered and jailed environmentalists around the world. Egypt is responsible for some of these imprisonments, most notably Abd el-Fattah.
