The arrival of Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica shows the importance of the upcoming Cop30 climate summit, the British foreign secretary has told his fellow ministers.
Jamaica’s government ordered evacuations from high risk areas and shut down the country’s airports as the Category 5 storm approached late on Tuesday.
Hurricane Melissa has caused catastrophic flash floods and landslides, while seven people were already reported to have been killed last night across the Caribbean region as a result of the storm.
Leadership
In London on Tuesday, Yvette Cooper told her Cabinet colleagues that the hurricane “underlined the importance” of the upcoming Cop30 summit in Brazil, with “those affected by climate change unable to pick up their island and move it out of the way of the approaching storm”.
Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, is expected to travel to the Cop30 leaders’ summit next week, held in the city of Belem near the mouth of the Amazon river.
Confirming Starmer’s attendance last week, the prime minister’s official spokesman said the trip was part of efforts to restore the UK as “a global leader for climate action and green growth”.
Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, told colleagues at the Cabinet on Tuesday that the UK was “showing important global leadership on climate” and that the summit was “a key moment for international cooperation”.
And the prime minister said he had “long thought that climate change was the challenge of our time, but also the single biggest opportunity”.
Hypocrisy
Starmer attended last year’s Cop29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, but had been reportedly considering not making the trip to Brazil this year.
The reports brought charges of “hypocrisy” from the Liberal Democrats, who pointed to Starmer’s criticism of Rishi Sunak over suggestions the then-prime minister would skip the 2022 summit. Sunak did eventually attend the summit in Egypt, and the following meeting in the United Arab Emirates.
The annual Cop (conference of the parties) summits bring together signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to discuss efforts to halt climate change.
A protest was held at Shell’s offices in London stating the company was responsible in part for the storm. Robin Wells, the director of Fossil Free London, said: “The damage of Hurricane Melissa is yet to fully be counted but we can count on one thing: more biblical storms, fires, and floods.
“This is Shell’s legacy. Oceans being heated up like bath water turbocharge storms and ravage homes, neighbourhoods and lives.
“This system does not prevent destruction, it encourages it. Laughing executives neck champagne as they propel this nightmare. They profit, whilst we are forced to evacuate and sentenced to suffer. Their profits are our loss.”
This Author
Christopher McKeon is the PA political correspondent. Brendan Montague is an editor of The Ecologist.