Urgent appeal on climate change

FRANCE: The world is ‘‘losing the battle’’ against climate change, Emmanuel Macron warned dozens of leaders yesterday at a summit in Paris aimed at jump-starting efforts to curb global warming.

Some 127 heads of state, leaders of institutions, charities and businesses gathered in the French capital to maintain momentum in the wake of President Donald Trump’s recent decision to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate accord. Macron called the Trump’s move ‘‘very bad news’’ and ‘‘aggressive’’.

‘‘We are not going fast enough, and that is dramatic,’’ Macron said at the One Planet Summit, which he convened to accelerate implementation of the 2015 Paris agreement.

The agreement to prevent glo- bal temperatures rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 was hailed as a breakthrough at the time, but has since been weakened by Trump’s decision to walk away from the deal.

In his opening remarks, Macron said: ‘‘We’re not moving quickly enough. We all need to act.’’

The world was, he added, ‘‘nowhere near’’ being able to honour a pledge to keep temperatures rises to between 1.5C and 2C, and the planet was heading for up to a 3.5C increase at present.

‘‘International commitments place us on a trajectory of global warming of 3.5C,’’ Macron said. ‘‘We are therefore a long way from the objective of the Paris agreement. Without . . . a shock in our own means of production and development, we will not manage it.’’

He told the assembled leaders, including Prince Mohammad bin Salman, of oil-dependent Saudi Arabia, that the world would have to give up fossil fuels.

France plans to stop production of its admittedly meagre fuel and gas reserves by 2040, by which time it is planned that none of the country’s cars will run on fossil fuel. Macron said developing countries should follow suit.

The Paris agreement included a pledge by developed nations to spend the equivalent of £75 billion (NZ$144b) a year by 2020 to help poorer countries fight global warming, but associations say that only just over £18b towards the pledge has materialised so far.

Macron, who has sought a leading role in the debate over global warming, had intended the summit to be an illustration of Trump’s isolation on the issue.

Critics noted that with neither Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, nor President Xi Jinping, of China, in Paris, the summit failed to fulfil hopes that Trump would find himself alone in not attending.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said the Paris accord was a ‘‘historic agreement’’ that was ‘‘right morally but also economically’’.

In a rebuttal to Trump’s claims it was bad for business, May said: ‘‘You don’t have to choose between cutting emissions and growing an economy. We choose both.’’

Co-chaired by Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank, and Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, the summit focused on how financial institutions could stump up more funds and how to get corporate giants to embrace green policies.

Some 225 investment funds managing more than US$26 trillion (NZ$37.4t) in assets pledged to pile pressure on the 100 largest corporate greenhouse emitters to curb pollution and disclose climate-related financial information.

The group includes the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest US public pension fund.

Kim said the bank would stop financing oil and gas projects within two years, while the European Commission unveiled €9b (NZ$15.2b) worth of investments targeting sustainable cities, energy and agriculture for Africa and EU neighbourhood countries.

The gathering ended with the unveiling of 12 international projects that will inject hundreds of millions of dollars into efforts to curb climate change.

A string of prominent Americans insisted the US remained committed to the Paris accord.

John Kerry, the former US Secretary of State, said that 38 states have legislation pushing renewable energy and 90 major American cities support the Paris accord, accounting for 80 per cent of its population.

‘‘We’re going to stay on track,’’ he said.

– Telegraph Group, The Times