The Bashing Games

Pooja Krishna H A, reporting from the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UN - ECOSOC), presents the delegates’ stances on climate change.

Following the Delegate of Australia’s proposal to suspend formal debate, the motion to discuss the need for strong nations to effect climate change was passed. The head-bashing started when the Delegate of France ‘strongly condemned’ the United States of America (USA) for backing out of the Paris Agreement, or the Paris Climate Accord, which is aimed at strengthening the global response to climate change [1] .

“If countries like the USA, which are the supposed superpowers of the world, back out of agreements, it will confuse the other countries and cause them to rethink their involvement. It will cause a domino effect, and slowly, other countries will also start to back out” said the Delegate of France in response to the reporter’s request to elaborate on the topic.

As the Delegate also mentioned, the world cannot afford to have more discord among its people, especially when an issue as important as climate change is concerned.

Whether USA’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement caused a domino effect or not, the Delegate of France’s accusation at USA certainly did. The delegates in the Council slowly started blaming and condemning the United States for things ranging from climate change, to everything else under the sun.

However, not all the delegates were as direct as the Delegate of France: choosing to attack with a blunt knife. One of them was the Delegate of Norway, who claimed that it was the ‘more developed countries’ that contributed to climate change, which irked the Delegate of the Russian Federation too.

In the midst of all this was the Delegate of Afghanistan’s stance that the other SDG’s were less important as compared to the goal to reduce climate change. When the reporter asked for one such goal, the Delegate replied that goal number 12 (Responsible and Sustainable Consumption and Production) was ‘clearly less important’ than climate change.

The Delegate of the United States of America, however, remained strangely silent throughout the ordeal.

Citations

[1] http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php