2020 turning point for climate change
LONDON: World greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2020 and decline soon after that if countries are to achieve their Paris climate goals and prevent global warming from spiralling to harmful levels, a former United Nations climate chief said yesterday.
Under the Paris Agreement, countries pledged to keep global average temperature rise to well below 2° C above pre-industrial levels, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in the second half of the century.
“In order to be a decarbonised economy by 2050, we have to bend the (emissions) curve by 2020,” said Christiana Figueres.
“Not only is it urgent and necessary, but actually we are very nicely on our way to achieving it,” she said before launching a campaign to get governments, businesses, investors and other sectors behind a 2020 deadline.
The energy sector was well on its way to switching to renewable energy sources, while transport was picking up the pace, Figueres said.
Carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector have stayed flat for three years, even while the global economy has continued to grow, as countries adopted cleaner energy sources, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
India, Norway and Germany all aim to switch completely to electric cars by 2030.
At least US$1 trillion (RM4.4 trillion) needed to be invested in clean technologies globally by 2020, said Figueres, who completed her term as executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in July last year.
“The fact is that we’re moving in the right direction,” she said, adding that green bonds alone were predicted to reach US$200 billion this year.
Figueres said clean technologies were cheaper and carried a lower financial risk than those based around fossil fuel use.
And, cutting emissions had many short-term benefits such as better health, job creation, and food, water and energy security, she added.
Heavy industry and land use, including farming and forestry, are two sectors lagging behind in cutting emissions, she said.
“It is absolutely a no-brainer to restore degraded lands because it’s cheap and helps with food security and avoidance of forced migration,” she said. “We know how to do it... Scaling up on that is going to be the difficulty.”
IEA executive director Fatih Birol said an early peak of emissions around 2020 was “critical”, and was “well within reach with existing technology and proven policies”.
Earlier this month, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order to roll back climate change regulations ushered in by his predecessor, Barack Obama, and in his election campaign vowed to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement.
Whether it would be better for the US to stay in the accord was not a “black and white situation”, said Figueres.
If the US remains, there is “full participation”, but if it leaves, “it perhaps allows all the other countries to move forward more quickly”, she said. Reuters