The lack of sufficient progress in curbing negative consequences of global climate change since the signing of the 2015 Paris climate deal is the result of lack of political leadership to shift the focus of economies toward renewable energy sources and reduced energy consumption,
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th September, 2018) The lack of sufficient progress in curbing negative consequences of global climate change since the signing of the 2015 Paris climate deal is the result of lack of political leadership to shift the focus of economies toward renewable energy sources and reduced energy consumption, experts told Sputnik, alarmed at the fact that three months ahead of the key COP24 conference, the world had mostly failed to live up to the climate goals.
On September 10, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivered a keynote speech on climate change, warning that, unless nations changed their policy by 2020, the world could face "runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us."
To support his assessments, the UN chief cited recent deadly natural disasters, including Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and deadly monsoon flooding in the Indian state of Kerala, as examples of extreme weather. Guterres blamed the situation on the lack of "leadership � from politicians, from business and scientists, and from the public everywhere" to reverse climate change and its consequences.
The warning came in the run-up to the COP24 conference in December, which will bring together government ministers in Poland to discuss the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile, many countries have failed to live up to the climate pledges, with the United States falling short by third of their promises. Australia is also projected to miss Paris deal targets as its greenhouse gas emissions were registered at a record high this year.
POLITICAL DECISIONS NEEDED TO AVOID CLIMATE CATASTROPHY
France is the country trying to be at the forefront of the fight against climate change but is seemingly failing in setting an example. The recent resignation of French Minister of Ecological and Inclusive Transition Nicolas Hulot alarmed many climate NGOs. Hulot said that he felt alone in promoting environment-related goals, and that French environmental policies were being heavily guided by powerful industrial lobbies and their economic interests.
Pauline Boyer, the spokeswoman for the social movement for climate Alternatiba, said that strong political will and radical actions were needed to make progress on climate-related issues and avoid climate catastrophe.
"Clearly, measures taken by the states do not live up to climate emergency ... Nicolas Hulot preferred resigning rather than carrying out the politics of taking small steps ... We are not reaching the goals of COP21, because there is no political decision. We need a political decision, because we have very little room for maneuver. Politicians need to take responsibility, it's them who have the means, it's them who manage the budget ... The lack of action will bring us to a climate chaos ... We can't praise ourselves and say 'everything is going fine' because we are already living the climate catastrophe. We need radical measures, actions that live up to the challenges we are facing," Boyer told Sputnik.
She said that her association was organizing mass protests prior to the publication of the special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the impact of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, to denounce the lack of action and the policy aggravating climate change.
However, switching to renewable energy requires a lot of investment which now the big industries are getting instead. Nathalie Hemeleers, policy director at Brussels-based non-profit Bioenergy Europe, told Sputnik that governments have to stop subsidizing fossil fuels and progressively phase out the use of coal.
"EU institutions are trying to move toward more investments in renewables. France has committed to decreasing its electricity production from nuclear energy. A couple of EU member states have committed to phasing out coal. All of this is positive, but more efforts are needed if we are serious about our international climate commitments: fossil fuels are still largely subsidized, either directly or indirectly, while they should be progressively phased out. This is incoherent with our climate objectives," she said.
Hemeleers suggested that carbon pricing could become an effective tool to phase out the use of environmentally-unfriendly sources of energy.
"An important tool to shift investments towards renewable energies is carbon pricing. On the one hand, the ETS (Emissions Trading System) should be reinforced and the price of carbon should be much higher to have a real effect on investment decisions. On the other hand, member states should introduce national carbon taxes in sectors outside ETS," Hemeleers added.
Valerie Faudon, the head of the French Society for Nuclear Energy (SFEN), citing the example of France, said that governments overlook the problem of decreasing energy consumption and put efforts into diversifying the energy mix instead.
"One of the challenges of political situation in France is that there is a lot of debate on the share of nuclear in the electricity mix rather than on reducing consumption of oil and gas. A lot of resources are spent on renewables in the electricity sector rather than on developing renewables in the heat sector where we still have a lot of oil and gas. That's the main challenge for current political debate - to make sure resources are allocated to the right sectors and that priority is set to reduce consumption rather than diversify the electricity mix," Faudon said.
France has set a goal to reduce its reliance on nuclear power by 50 percent in 2025. Many climate experts believe nuclear phase-out is a necessary step to switching to clean energy.
Faudon said, however, that this was not a solution, since one needed to think about the security of supply and have a concrete plan of action in order to make an advance on environmental politics, which western European countries, including those planning to phase out their existing reactors (like Germany) do not have.
"We need a priority given to the fight against climate change. And second we need a very pragmatic view on solutions; we need studies to see what works, what doesn't work, how much things cost, we need R&D investments... We need to put together goals and expectations for environment, but also the economics of different solutions to find an optimal and efficient path," Faudon explained.
The Paris climate deal, seen as a major international agreement on climate, was signed in the French capital in November 2015. The agreement, created within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, aims to keep the increase in average global temperature at below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
