Year of earthly thoughts but less action on climate change

The environment dominated global conversations this year.

"Climate emergency" was the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year. Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg became Time "person of the year". The 16-year-old is the voice of change at a time when governments are failing to act fast, illustrated most recently by the lack of a breakthrough at the UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid.

When they met in Spain's capital earlier this month, officials from some 200 countries deliberated for long hours but could not come up with a consensus on key aspects of the 2015 Paris accord such as the international carbon market mechanism.

The results of the COP25(Conference of the Parties, signatories to the UN climate change framework of 1992) meeting were "below our expectations", Zhao Yingmin, China's vice-minister of ecology and the environment, said in Madrid.

He added the developing countries were disappointed that developed countries "did not answer their demand for finance", according to Xinhua News Agency.

Goals are simpler to identify on a collective level but tougher to meet individually as countries, especially in regions with population pressure or poverty issues.

A huge energy demand or a slowing economy can make it harder to cut coal consumption in the developing world, because alternative cleaner fuels cost more and newer technology is needed. But there are ways to fund sustainable development and innovative research in the field.

China is using both coal and renewable energy. While some call it a contradiction, others see it as a practical response.

The United States has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement. The European Union is working on its own green deal. The developed world has the benefit of hindsight vision on the environmental mess created by industrialization. Poorer countries do not have to take the same high-carbon route if local policymaking is effective.

I had trekked to Mingyong glacier in Yunnan province in 2017 to write a report on the effects of climate change in China. The country's lowest-lying glacier has been in a state of retreat and thinning since the past 40 years. In Deqen county, a middle-aged rural resident told me about the glacier's better health in her childhood. Local government officials said the area's permafrost will be affected, and yaks and other animals that live in high altitudes will find their natural habitats changing adversely.

A study by the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, suggested environmental awareness has risen in China over the past decade.

Worldwide investments in clean energy projects have hit a six-year low, according to The Economist.

Those who have read Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem will be able to easily imagine a scenario of mass dehydration on Earth from a very hot sun. Although the author used it in a different context in the novel, the analogy is probably apt while describing the crisis human civilization faces from the environmental degradation.

The environment will likely become a political issue in many countries in future. Governments around the world can no longer afford to ignore such concerns.