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Perhaps Hurricane Melissa is not the best example to cite when calling for action to protect the planet from climate change since the Caribbean is a region notoriously prone to extreme weather. But every day, data emerges to confirm that more lives will be lost unless global warming is comprehensively addressed, with one international academic study claiming that rising temperatures are now killing one person a minute around the world.

Jamaica’s devastation comes as the world turns its attention to COP30 in Brazil in November. One wonders if this meeting of the signatories to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will be any different from the preceding 29 gatherings, all of which yielded little. As in the previous conferences, experts, company executives, activists, and national officials will be vying for access to the airwaves and social media in order to make the case for and against compliance with previous agreements to protect nature and shield the environment from excessive human contribution to global warming.

Countries will continue to go through the motions of presenting updated national climate commitments and pledges and also assess progress on renewable energy and targets agreed at previous summits. But it seems increasingly obvious that instead of the world working toward the goals of the Paris Agreement, nations are looking to water down their policies or shelve them all together, using budgetary and other economic pressures as excuses. Since many experts have concluded that the battle to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 C above the pre-industrial average has been lost, the pressing question is whether the world can work collectively to adapt to extreme weather and minimize the impact a hotter planet will have on its inhabitants.

The signs are not encouraging. Pleas by Antonio Guterres are unlikely to resonate and drive the global agenda toward more cooperation. The UN secretary-general this week called on nations to recognize the failure and acknowledge the devastating consequences of exceeding the 1.5 C limit as seen in the Amazon, Greenland, western Antarctica or the coral reefs. But this overshoot is unlikely to be limited and short in duration, as the UN head wishes, especially when less than a third of signatory nations have sent in their climate action plans and nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile, powerful nations, including the US, have abandoned the process altogether, while China also has been wavering.

Data emerges almost daily to confirm more lives will be lost.

Mohamed Chebaro

Global consensus about the health of the planet is lacking despite the frequent reminders delivered by numerous reports and scientific findings. In the annual Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change published this week, experts pointed out that climate change is ravaging the health of people around the world and warned that policy failures are leading to millions of avoidable deaths each year as the transition to a cleaner way of life stalls.

Billionaire investor and philanthropist Bill Gates is right to admit that world leaders have failed to avert the worse and prevent the planet from exceeding the 1.5 C threshold, adding that they should now devote their efforts to ringfencing health instead of spending money on temperature reduction targets. But if the world has failed to limit the temperature rise, can it succeed in mitigating the health fallout? The drive to transition economies and societies to a lifestyle based on reduced emissions has already polarized the world. And what caused the failure of those efforts is also likely to disrupt any strategy to protect vulnerable countries bearing the brunt of climate change.

I do not know if one should draw comfort from Gates’ claim that global warming is far from a “civilization-ending” phenomenon. Yet improving people’s welfare, particularly in vulnerable regions, through investment in energy access, healthcare, and agricultural resilience could lessen the impact, as he suggests. But how can that approach work if its success relies once again on policymakers, officials, experts, activists, and donors finding a consensus that was elusive the first time round?

• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist with more than 25 years’ experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.