The loss and damage fund represents a very clear example of the failure and hypocrisy that climate summits increasingly represent. COP27 wants to be happy for having achieved a pyrrhic, insufficient and as yet unrealised breakthrough on financial mechanisms to assist the most vulnerable countries and to help with damages and losses caused by climate change. This in fact only points with tremendous starkness to the inability of COP27 to address the source of the climate change problem, which is none other than fossil fuels, which continue to rely on unaddressed and unchallenged state subsidies, which continue to be lobbied by 636 oil groups and more companies who have an interest in business as usual for fossil fuels.  

The focus on symptoms reflects the global inability to face the terrible reality that we are 80% dependent on fossil fuels to produce our energy. The big countries have not stepped up, the European Union has made very inadequate proposals, and to focus precisely on the damage and loss, when we should be focusing on stopping further damage and loss, reflects the degree of incompetence of those gathered, the degree of political cowardice, the degree of lobbying, and reflects once again the huge gap between climate summits and the urgency of tackling climate change. With each passing day the gap between theory and practice grows wider, some countries suffer more than others, but, in the end, we are all suffering.