Macron: We are losing climate change fight
French president tells world leaders they can grow their economy and still cut emissions
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.
The French president’s statement came amid claims in the UK that he is seeking to turn Paris into the world’s leading green finance capital while Brexit talks continue.
Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem former energy and climate change secretary, urged ministers to back the Bank of England’s task force on climate-related financial disclosures and bring in new corporate requirements on their fossil fuel assets in order to “tackle this threat and protect London”.
Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, brushed aside Sir Ed’s concerns as he argued that Britain “leads the world in climate finance”, adding that Theresa May was promoting the availability of green finance in the UK at the summit.
Some 127 heads of state, leaders of institutions, charities and businesses – including Bill Gates and Sir Richard Branson – gathered in the French capital to maintain momentum in the wake of Donald Trump’s recent decision to pull the US out of the 2015 Paris climate accord. Mr Macron called the US president’s move “very bad news” and “aggressive”.
Mrs May said that the Paris accord was a “historic agreement” that was “right morally but also economically”.
In a rebuttal to Mr Trump’s claims it was bad for business, the Prime Minister said: “You don’t have to choose between cutting emissions and growing an economy. We choose both.”
But in his opening remarks at the One Planet summit, Mr 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 (2.7F) and 2C (3.6F), and the planet was heading for up to a 3.5C (6.3F) increase at present.
Co-chaired by Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank, and Antonio Guterres, the UN 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 $26 trillion in assets pledged to pile pressure on the 100 largest corporate greenhouse emitters to curb pollution and disclose climaterelated financial information.
The group includes the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CALPERS), the largest US public pension fund.
Mr Kim said the bank would stop financing oil and gas projects within two years, while the European Commission unveiled €9billion 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. While Mr Trump was not invited and the official delegation kept a low profile, a string of prominent Americans insisted the US remained committed to the Paris accord.
Among them were Leonardo Di Caprio, the Holywood star, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor and former governor of California, who said: “The United States did not drop out of the Paris agreement. Donald Trump got Donald Trump out of the Paris agreement.”
John Kerry, the former US Secretary of State, said that 38 states had legislation pushing renewable energy and 90 major American cities supported the Paris accord, accounting for 80 per cent of its population. “We’re going to stay on track,” he said.
Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, said the private sector coalition America’s Pledge, which promises to honour goals set in 2015, “now represents half of the US economy”. He also said he hoped Mr Macron was right when he suggested he might be able to change Mr Trump’s mind, which was the mark of an “intelligent, courageous person”. “Hope springs eternal,” he said. Developing nations, meanwhile, warned that the rich were lagging with a commitment dating back to 2009 to provide $100billion a year by 2020 to help their green transition. “The missing piece of the jigsaw is the funding to help the world’s poorer countries access clean energy so they don’t follow the fossil fuel-powered path of the rich world,” said Mohamed Adow, charity Christian Aid’s lead on climate change.
Angela Merkel, who was once labelled the “climate chancellor” for her efforts to curb global warming, faced criticism in Germany for failing to attend the summit.