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2021: a decisive year in the climate fight

2021-04-22T20:32:00.277Z


A pandemic that relegated it to the background, the return of the United States as a key player and the pressures for a green recovery come together at a historic moment for the environment


The alarms have not stopped ringing despite the pandemic.

And António Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations (UN), is running out of harsh words to warn of the consequences of this planetary climate crisis.

This week he spoke of a "terrifying" scenario when referring to the latest report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

This UN agency has been publishing its annual evaluations for 28 years now and the conclusion is crystal clear: the evidence and impacts of global warming are piling up.

For example, 2020 was among the three warmest years ever recorded, the WMO recalled.

The other two were 2016 and 2019.

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If the trend continues, 2021 will be another year warmer than normal. As Freja Vamborg, a scientist at the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, recalls, the last six years have been the warmest six since reliable records began. It will be warm, but it should also be a turning point in the climate fight, as demanded by NGOs, the UN and other international institutions and governments. "Truly," Guterres stressed Monday, "this is a crucial year for the future of humanity." The pandemic caused two important environmental summits to be delayed until 2021: the climate summit to be held in Glasgow (United Kingdom) and the biodiversity meeting in Kunming (China). In addition, the pandemic largely took the fight against warming off the international agenda.But the coronavirus has not ended the problem. As the World Meteorological Organization recalls, "the slowdown in the economy related to the pandemic did not stop the engines of climate change or accelerate its impacts."

At the 2020 Glasgow climate summit, countries should have presented tougher greenhouse gas emission cut plans than they have offered so far under the Paris Agreement. But, when 2020 ended, only 75 of the nearly 200 countries that signed Paris had done so. That is why 2021 is expected to be decisive. Also, for the return to the fight against warming in the United States, whose president has organized a climate summit, which starts this Thursday coinciding with Earth Day, with the 40 main heads of state and presidents of the world to make their official statement. return. At this meeting, it will present its emission cut targets between now and 2030, that is,for what is considered the most important decade in the efforts that human beings must make to reverse the problem they have generated with their emissions.

Rebound of emissions.

The official temperature records kept by the WMO and other scientific bodies date back to 1850, when the industrial era began and when the large-scale burning of fossil fuels began to fuel economic development. When these fuels are burned they generate greenhouse gases that largely accumulate in the atmosphere and overheat the planet. The main of these gases is carbon dioxide (CO₂) and during the pandemic these emissions fell. But, as the experts have warned from the beginning, after the fall there will be a rebound because the decline was due to the economic slowdown and not due to a structural change that modifies the way in which the world feeds its cars or generates its electricity.The International Energy Agency forecasts that energy-related CO₂ emissions will grow by around 5% in 2021, which would represent the second highest growth recorded so far. The previous one occurred in 2010, after the great financial crisis.

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Approximately half of the CO₂ emitted ends up accumulating in the atmosphere - the rest is absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial vegetation.

This atmospheric accumulation, the highest in the last 800,000 years according to the WMO, leads to an increase in temperatures and the intensity and number of extreme events such as droughts, floods and strong storms.

"World indicators show that the average temperatures of the last five years are the highest on record: 1.2 degrees Celsius above the average for the period 1850-1900," says a report that the Copernicus service, a program to monitor the effects of warming in the EU, presents this Thursday.

Insufficient efforts.

The Paris Agreement established that, to avoid the most disastrous effects of climate change, countries had to reduce their emissions in such a way that from 2050 they would have to disappear.

The general objective is that the increase in temperature, which is already at those 1.2 degrees, does not exceed two degrees compared to pre-industrial levels.

And as far as possible, they should not exceed 1.5.

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  • Failure to governments in the first review of the Paris Agreement against global warming

The problem is that the current countries' cut plans will lead to an increase of more than three degrees. That is why states are required to increase their reduction targets. Some have already done so, such as the European Union, which has gone from a decrease by 2030 of 40% to 55% - something that will be set in a climate law - compared to 1990, and the United Kingdom, which has promised to cut back. 68% at the end of this decade. These objectives would be aligned with the roadmap drawn up by the UN to comply with the Paris Agreement: that global greenhouse gases are reduced by 45% in 2030 compared to 2010. The problem is that Europe, with or without the United Kingdom,it has less and less weight in global emissions - they are no longer even 10% - even though it is one of the historical culprits of warming as it was a pioneer in the industrial revolution.

The return of the United States.

The problem at the moment is mainly a matter of two actors: the United States and China, which accumulate about 40% of world emissions.

China, the main global emitter for more than a decade, has for years resisted being equated with developed countries in terms of emission-cutting obligations.

Its objectives are much less harsh than those of the EU: reach its peak of emissions before 2030 and from there, lower them.

But, at the end of last year, he promised to toughen his plans somewhat and promised that he will reach carbon neutrality (emit as much as it removes from the atmosphere) by 2060.

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The other major emitter, the United States, is anyone's guess. Although its new president, Democrat Joe Biden, has given clear signs of wanting to place the fight against climate change at the center of his policy, the truth is that the United States has not been a reliable partner in this international battle if it is attended to his scare history. First, it disassociated itself from the Kyoto Protocol at the beginning of the century. And, already with Donald Trump as president, he ignored the Paris Agreement, a pact that was signed in 2015 and whose legal instruments had to be largely decaffeinated for the United States to ratify it. Perhaps for this reason, China almost every time it intervenes in an international forum on warming insists that its country does comply with what it signs and with what it commits.

Coinciding with Earth Day, Biden has convened for this Thursday and Friday a meeting with 40 presidents and prime ministers of the world. Unlike what happened in recent years, in which leaders who have not shown commitments against climate change did not attend, the United States has decided to invite controversial leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro .

At this summit, the US president is expected to present his emission cut targets for 2030. That cut would be around 50% compared to 2005 levels - the year in which the US reached its emissions peak -, according to the leaked information. so far to the big American media. This would mean doubling the goal that Obama set before signing in Paris. And it will involve a major decarbonization process (stop using oil, coal and gas derivatives) of the US economy with special attention to the electricity sector and, above all, transportation. Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, clarifies: "To be considered as a climate leader, Biden has to phase out fossil fuels at home and abroad."That means ending subsidies to the powerful fossil fuel sector. The other issue in which the United States is expected to return is in relation to climate finance: the funds that developed countries provide to the less wealthy to cope with the effects of warming. Until Trump's arrival, the United States was the main international donor.

Recovery still little green.

The pandemic took climate change out of the main focus and forced a delay in the UN summits;

However, the multimillion-dollar recovery plans of the countries may mean an acceleration of the decarbonization of the world economy, as several international organizations have been insisting for months.

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  • The gases that warm the planet would fall by 25% with a global green recovery

At the moment, the balance is quite discreet. The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) is monitoring the aid and incentives that are being launched by the governments of the 43 member countries of this body, including the United States, China and the European Union. The conclusion is that 336,000 million dollars of these covid funds (about 309,000 million euros) have a clear positive environmental impact. They account for 17% of total recovery spending so far. The problem is that a similar amount of funding has gone to activities that have a negative environmental or mixed impact at best. The remaining two-thirds of recovery aid has not yet been classified by the OECD.And its development and the public funds that will come will largely depend on whether 2021 truly becomes a crucial year in the fight against the climate crisis.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-04-22

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