News Headlines: November 11, 2021

Today on Sojourner Truth: On Sunday, October 31, the United Nations Climate Change Conference kicked off the COP26 (Conference of the Parties) in Glasgow, Scotland. Twenty-five thousand delegates from 200 countries are attending, and around 120 heads of state. The conference, which was delayed for a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, will run until Friday, November 12. Wednesday, November 10, marked one of the most critical days in the ongoing COP26 Conference of the Parties in Glasgow, Scotland. The conference has the stated purpose of taking global action on climate change, which is accelerating the environmental devastation of our planet. On Wednesday, the governments of China and the United States agreed to increase climate cooperation over the next decade. The world's two largest CO2 emitters pledged to act in a joint declaration. The declaration claims that both parties will work together to achieve the 1.5C temperature goal set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement. It also calls for stepped-up efforts to close the significant gap that remains to achieve that target. However, the joint statement was very short on details. And without details, no one knows what, if anything, will come out of the U.S. China agreement. U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping are even expected to hold a virtual meeting as early as next week, according to the BBC. Also on Wednesday, a draft agreement being circulated at the UN climate summit calls on countries to phase-out coal power. However, the draft agreement has been roundly criticized for failing to address the crisis. The UN Secretary General said that as of now, COP26 is on life support. By all accounts, unless something dramatic happens, it seems governments will have once again failed to address the climate catastrophe. Our guest is Souparna Lahiri, based in New Delhi, India. Souparna is the Global Forest Coalition's Climate Campaigner and Advisor. The Global Forest Coalition (GFC) is an international coalition of NGOs and Indigenous Peoples Organizations defending social justice and the rights of forest peoples in forest policies. We also hear from Vijay Kumar Thallam, the Advisor to Government of Andhra Pradesh for Agriculture & Cooperation, and in charge of implementation of natural farming in Andhra Pradesh. Lastly, Patrick Ioakimedes joins us to discuss an upcoming California Poor People's Campaign event focused on environmental devastation.