More fossil fuel projects represent moral and economic madness

Apr 08, 2022 News

---

– World must triple speed of shift to renewable energy – UN Secretary General

By Kiana Wilburg

Kaieteur News – United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres has issued another appeal this week for governments, particularly the world’s biggest carbon polluters such as China, India, Russia and the USA, to triple their speed in shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

His call this time around comes on the heels of the third Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report which provides an updated global assessment of climate change mitigation progress and pledges. It also examines the sources of global emissions and explains developments in emission reduction and mitigation efforts. Additionally, it assesses the impact of national climate pledges in relation to long-term emissions goals.
Following his perusal of the document, Guterres said, “This report is a litany of broken climate promises. It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unliveable world. We are on a fast track to climate disaster: Major cities under water, unprecedented heat waves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages, the extinction of a million species of plants and animals. This is not fiction or exaggeration. It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies.”
The UN Secretary General categorically stated that the world is on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5°C limit agreed in Paris by governments worldwide. “Some Government and business leaders are saying one thing, but doing another. Simply put, they are lying. And the results will be catastrophic. This is a climate emergency,” warned the official.
The official further stressed that the science confronting everyone is clear: to keep the 1.5°C limit agreed in Paris within reach, the world needs to cut global emissions by 45 percent this decade. He said however that the current pledges are clearly not enough. Guterres said, “Current climate pledges would mean a 14 percent increase in emissions. And most major emitters are not taking the steps needed to fulfill even these inadequate promises,” the official stated.
He further noted that investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is equivalent to “moral and economic madness” since such investments will soon be stranded assets, essentially rendering them a blot on the landscape and a blight on investment portfolios. Bur Guterres said it doesn’t have to be this way. He noted that the latest IPCC report is focused on mitigation — cutting emissions. It sets out viable, financially sound options in every sector that can keep the possibility of limiting warming to 1.5°C alive. Guterres noted however that nations must triple the speed of the shift to renewable energy. “That means moving investments and subsidies from fossil fuels to renewables — now. In most cases, renewables are already far cheaper. It means Governments ending the funding of coal, not just abroad, but at home.”
Importantly, Guterres said it also means the emergence of climate coalitions, made up of developed countries, multilateral development banks, private financial institutions and corporations, supporting major emerging economies in making this shift. It means protecting forests and ecosystems as powerful climate solutions.
Guterres noted that the report comes at a time of great global turbulence. He said inequalities are at unprecedented levels, the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is scandalously uneven, inflation is rising, and the war in Ukraine is causing food and energy prices to skyrocket. He stressed however that the increase of fossil fuel production by high emitters will only make matters worse.
“It is time to stop burning our planet and start investing in the abundant renewable energy all around us,” the UN Secretary General concluded.
ABOUT IPCC
The IPCC was created in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its implications and potential future risks, as well as to put forward adaptation and mitigation options. Through its assessments, the IPCC determines the state of knowledge on climate change. It identifies where there is agreement in the scientific community on topics related to climate change, and where further research is needed. The reports are drafted and reviewed in several stages, thus guaranteeing objectivity and transparency.
The IPCC is now in its sixth assessment cycle. Its three report released to date address the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change, bringing together the latest advances in climate science, and combining multiple lines of evidence from paleoclimate, observations, process understanding, and global and regional climate simulations. A total of 234 scientists from 66 countries are behind the first chapter of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report. Also, over 14,000 scientific papers are referenced in the report.
Some of the key findings of the report are as follows:
• Keeping to 1.5 Degrees Celsius will require “immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions” in emissions while slower action leads to a temperature of 2 Degrees Celsius and more suffering for all life on Earth.
• Drought is increasing in more than 90 percent of regions across the world
• The past five years have been the hottest on record since 1850
• The recent rate of sea-level rise has nearly tripled compared with 1901-1971
• Extreme sea-level events that occurred once a century are projected to occur at least annually.
• Under all the emissions scenarios considered, all targets for reductions will be broken this century unless huge cuts in carbon emissions take place.
• 2,400 billion tonnes of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) have been emitted by humanity since 1850. The world can afford to only leak another 400 billion tonnes to have a 66 percent chance of keeping to 1.5 Degrees Celsius.
• Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level.
• Under scenarios with increasing CO2 emissions, the ocean and land carbon sinks are projected to be less effective at slowing the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere.

---

---