Pedro Walpole SJ
We are entering the era of 1.5°C and above.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) recently released Limiting Overshoot Spotlight Report, a study affirming that under current policies, the world is unable to limit global warming to 1.5°C, the cornerstone of the Paris Agreement. The report’s message is that “overshoot is not an argument for resignation, but rather for urgency to action” and lays out available choices and pathways for both mitigation and adaptation.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres knows there is no easy turnaround that could (and morally should) happen at COP31, the climate conference in November 2026 in Antalya, Türkiye. The 57-country “coalition of the willing” established during the Santa Marta Conference (First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels) in Santa Marta, Colombia in April 2026 is not a political fulcrum on which to turn matters. Guterres is trying to highlight the urgency needed yet wants to be positive.
But there is nearly silence about the elephant in the room which is the overuse of fossil fuels by all major economies.
Recent extreme events
For people living in island and low-lying countries, there is nothing so shocking as the seasonal reality of increasing unbearable extremes.
As we start the Season of Creation 2026, the Pacific islands are being devastated long-term and there is no turnaround for submerged atolls. The President of Palau recently spoke out, as well as Archbishop Peter Loy Chong of the Archdiocese of Suva in Fiji. Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David of the Diocese of Kalookan in Manila, Philippines has been outspoken on much of the disasters in Luzon and the corruption.
In the Philippines, five provinces – Tarlac, Pampanga, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, and Zambales – and hundreds of villages flooded in August until early September. The growth of a severe drought in Mindanao threatens the major harvest of the year. The battle over the waste incinerator in Manila and the proposed gold and copper mining project in Dupax del Norte, Nueva Vizcaya, show how politically there is little commitment, along with the gross failure of the flood control systems and corruption. We are also part of the problem though suffering most from the excesses of economic models of extractivism.
There was also the intense smog in late August to early September coming from severe forest and peatland fires in Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Sarawak and blanketing the Philippines along the line of the southwestern monsoon.
The margins cannot adapt anymore
What this means for millions of people, basically the poor, is they cannot adapt any more. They simply suffer the incrementally growing extremes, the water and food problems of which they see little relief even if the younger generations migrate to the cities.
For most of these contexts of the poor, there is no effective relocation process, just vulnerability, drift, and migration. Food and water security are growing crises along with health. There is no basis for being optimistic and upbeat about change.
It’s a struggle and the cheap optimism is a greenwashing with promises never fulfilled for the poor. If families lose a harvest, there is no relief from government, just debt. The elderly have poor health conditions and suffer the floods, heat, the smog. There is no relief.
People are exhausted with “adaptation and resilience” that seems to be used as an optimistic excuse for the burden and suffering of the poor each season.
With 30 percent of the carbon produced, much of the heat is absorbed by the oceans that creates the extreme weather patterns, not simply events. Much of the rest of the carbon is still in the atmosphere and may be taken in by vegetation and soil over 30 years, but there is no fast absorption and lockup by vegetation.
With these current droughts in particular, afforestation with fast-growing alien species will experience a high death rate, about 70% over five years. Meanwhile, Indonesia and Malaysia drained their peatlands that now easily burn, and burn deep.
Glacial melt has gone on for decades, with permafrost melt releasing methane. Pakistan had a major disaster before COP27, but was simply ignored, as will the 26 August 2026 glacial collapse and floods in Nepal just before COP31. The COP process ignores the national voices each year from the margins and policy is decided by the powerful few.
Carbon capture technology as a response to the silent excesses of fossil fuel consumption is not an answer but a delay until political positions shift in the coming decade. There is no technology to solve this but just myth.
Stopping fossil fuel burning is the path of hope and reality that could start the curve in the decade ahead.
COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago was a source of great hope and integrity as he listened to the Indigenous during COP30 in Belem, Brazil and built the pre-COP31 venue for Indigenous youth in Fiji in early October 2026 with UNICEF.
Indigenous youth need to join the COP each year to learn this is the global context where they must have a voice.
Pedro Walpole SJ is the coordinator of the River Above Asia Oceania Ecclesial Network (RAOEN).
Photo: Aerial shot taken on 2 September 2026 of flooded houses in the town of Calumpit, Bulacan, in Central Luzon, Philippines (Source: newsinfo.inquirer.net)
Continuous and concentrated rainfall in Central and Western Luzon and Metro Manila in the Philippines in late August 2026 brought massive flooding, as major rivers overflowed and urban drainage systems overwhelmed.
With rainfall totals exceeding 300 to 400 mm in just three days, in combination with atmospheric dynamics, ocean warming, climate change, and ecological degradation, among others, what was once experienced as a regular “monsoon” season (referred to as habagat in Filipino) became an extended period of persistent rainfall and flooding that did not have the time to subside.