Macron vows fight of the century against warming

Jan 2020 hottest

PARIS, Feb 15, (Agencies): France’s leader called the battle against climate change and environmental destruction “the fight of the century” Thursday after visiting a melting glacier in the French Alps.

But President Emmanuel Macron’s tour of the Mer de Glace glacier and an ice cave carved into it near the mountain town of Chamonix was condemned as an electoral stunt by environmental campaigners. Critics accused Macron of using the icy photo-op to burnish his government’s green credentials ahead of France’s municipal elections next month.

Clad in winter gear, Macron listened attentively Thursday to explanations about how France’s biggest glacier has lost much of its splendor, retreating up its valley and shedding so much of its thickness that the stairs leading down to it have had to be extended.

Macron said seeing the glacier’s retreat brought home the “fear that it disappears” and a feeling of “our own vulnerability, the fragility of the landscape which, until only a few decades ago, we thought was unchangeable.”

“I deeply believe that this fight, which is a long-term fight, can also have concrete, tangible, visible results. It will be the fight of the century, of our capacity to invent new ways to live and do, sustainably,” he said.

But Macron faces vociferous opposition on multiple fronts over climate change. Activists say his lobbying for global action is not backed up by sufficient French government measures to curb the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. France is behind on its European renewable energy commitments, ranking second from bottom in the EU, according to Eurostat.

Macron

Macron has also delayed by 10 years plans to reduce the share of French energy derived from nuclear power from 71% to 50%. Beyond the government, opponents in France’s yellow vest economic protest movement fiercely opposed Macron’s efforts to hike fuel taxes to combat pollution, complaining that the move penalized regular workers on tight budgets.

Environmental campaigners dismissed Macron’s Alpine visit as an unnecessary and cynical use of taxpayer-funded resources to try to sap support from proecology candidates in the municipal election in March.

“The government is trying to repaint its policies in green,” said Julien Bayou, national secretary of the EELV ecology party.

Meanwhile, a European group fighting climate change on Friday hailed the decision by two Polish energy companies to suspend financing for the construction of a new coal power plant.

Climate Action network said suspension of funding for the Ostroleka C plant in eastern Poland should lead to the cancellation of the entire project and wider development of renewable energy sources.

“Finally, a sensible decision,” said Joanna Flisowska from Climate Actions Network – CAN Europe. “This is a long-awaited decision that recognizes the fact that a climate-neutral Europe leaves no room for coal.”

Critics of the project have called the plant a “coal monument” to Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party which has been pushing for the project as it tries to preserve Poland’s coal industry, one of the country’s largest employers. The two companies, Enea and Energa, said their joint decision to suspend the funding was dictated by the new policy by the European Union and the European Investments Bank to focus on green energy. In their statement late Thursday they also noted difficulties in finding more sponsors for the project estimated to cost at least 6 billion zlotys ($1.5 billion.)

They said they need to do more analyses on the project, but that their decision can potentially result in the suspension of the project.

WASHINGTON:

Delayed

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The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed that last January has been the warmest month in recorded history.

“In the span of 141 years of climate records, there has never been a warmer January than last month,” the NOAA said in a statement, according to scientists at its National Centers for Environmental Information.

It indicated that January 2020 “marked the 44th consecutive January and the 421st consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20thcentury average.”

It noted that the January “global land and ocean surface temperature was the highest on record at 1.14ºC above the 20th-century average,” surpassing the record set in January 2016 by 0.02 of a degree Celsius.