Wildfires ravaging Australia since last year indicate that the world is nearing a "climate disaster," yet this country, along with the United States, is still pioneering climate change denialism, Rae Kwon Chung, a UN climate expert and laureate of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th January, 2020) Wildfires ravaging Australia since last year indicate that the world is nearing a "climate disaster," yet this country, along with the United States, is still pioneering climate change denialism, Rae Kwon Chung, a UN climate expert and laureate of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, told Sputnik.
Bushfires, unprecedented in their scale and intensity, have been burning across Australia since September. They have killed 28 people as well as an estimated 1 billion animals, many of which are unique to Australia. Conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison is, meanwhile, known for his skepticism about climate change. Under him, the country has stopped payments to the United Nations' global climate fund and skipped major climate conferences, expressing reluctance to spend money on this "nonsense."
"I think this [Australian fire crisis] is real climate crisis and approaching climate disaster. In Australia the climate disaster is happening already. But it's not only in Australia. Last summer it was in Sweden, they had wildfires as well. Almost all countries in Europe had wildfires. The USA as well, this country is suffering from hurricanes," Chung said.
Despite that, he went on, Australia and the US are "still one of the strongest deniers of climate change."
"The position of president [Donald] Trump, and countries like Australia and the US, is very detrimental, because it is sending a very strong signal to other countries, countries 'in the middle'. They are thinking 'look at the US, why do we have to bother, why should I be different?' This kind of attitude is spreading now to many countries around the world because of the US and Australia," Chung stated.
Still, there is opposition to the climate disaster denialism, including in some of American states. That is "very laudable" but they are still a "minority group," the expert added, citing the growing detrimental effects of climate change.
According to Chung, some estimates show that the world is already heading toward over 3 percent of warming in global temperatures unless some drastic actions are taken.
"Australia is on fire ... the whole earth is on fire. There are many people saying that already 10% of the earth has been warmer by 2 degrees or over 2 degrees. It's Kazakhstan, Switzerland, even Austria, Canada as well. 20% of the earth is already above 1.5 degrees," he said.
Chung is an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) member, who received a personal copy of Nobel Peace prize awarded to the IPCC in 2007 for his contribution to the panel's report on technology transfer. He also serves as Global Energy Prize International Award Committee chairman.
