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Economic model 'transformation' needed: UN climate envoy
By Nina LARSON
Geneva (AFP) May 10, 2019

Paris climate deal architect 'disappointed' at EU summit
Brussels (AFP) May 10, 2019 - EU leaders meeting in Romania missed an opportunity to act on growing public demand for stronger action against climate change, an architect of the Paris agreement said Friday.

Laurence Tubiana, who now heads the European Climate Foundation, said the lack of ambition on climate was all the more glaring at a summit touting efforts to tackle future challenges.

"I think it is a missed opportunity," Tubiana told journalists in Brussels following Thursday's summit in Sibiu. "I'm really disappointed with Sibiu."

Tubiana said Germany, the European Union's biggest economy, is "dragging its feet" on demands from other EU countries to ensure Europe moves to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Speaking in Sibiu on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stopped short of taking up the call by eight EU countries to meet the target.

"Because our targets for 2050 differ, I have not yet been able to fully support this initiative," Merkel told reporters.

She said the "first step" was for the EU to meet its pledge to reduce its carbon emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

The eight countries appealing for zero emissions are France, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, according to a copy seen by AFP.

At a Brussels summit in March, French President Emmanuel Macron complained fellow

leaders had failed to pursue the 2050 target in line with their pledges to the Paris

accord.

Tubiana said there was a "dissonance" between the attitude of government officials and the demand from a public increasingly concerned about the impact of climate change.

However, she said there was a "shift in the centre of gravity" in the debate as mainstream political parties in Germany and elsewhere feel the need to forge positions on global warming.

She also said economic powerhouse China's push for new technologies like electric cars was putting competitive pressure on EU firms to do the same.

Tubiana hoped for a new opportunity for leaders to step up their climate ambition at the June summit in Brussels, following May's European Parliament elections.

As for the Paris climate deal she helped craft, Tubiana said "it sticks," adding there has been "no domino effect" since US President Donald Trump pulled out of the accord.

The 195-nation UN pact sealed in Paris calls for capping the rise in Earth's temperature at "well under" two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and 1.5C if possible.

A dramatic transformation of the global economic model will be necessary if the world truly wants to tackle the problem of climate change, a top UN envoy told AFP Friday.

"We need bold actions," insisted Luis Alfonso de Alba, who was appointed late last year to prepare an ambitious climate summit in New York in September.

In an interview with AFP in Geneva Friday, he stressed that climate change should not be merely considered an environmental problem.

"We are talking about a transformation of the economic model that is going to be needed to achieve the results we need," he said.

The September 23 summit at the United Nations is billed as the first major stocktaking gathering of world leaders on climate change since the Paris agreement was reached in 2015.

The event follows a string of reports containing dire predictions about the future of the planet as carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, pushing targets set out under the Paris accord further out of reach.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he wants the summit to be "action oriented", and he has asked countries to present "concrete, realistic plans" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent over the next decade and to net zero by 2050.

De Alba said he was working to identify ambitious projects to showcase at the September meeting, as well as new models of cooperation and coordination between countries, organisations and public and private players.

- 'Drastic changes' -

"It is evident that private financing will be indispensable to move from the billions to the trillions that are going to be needed," he said.

Fighting climate change he said, "is an issue that requires a transformation of the way we consume, the way we produce."

"This is not a process in which we can aim at a gradual increase of the ambitions. We need some drastic changes."

Despite the huge challenges, de Alba said that he was "optimistic", pointing to the enthusiasm and commitment he was witnessing from governments and non-governmental groups alike.

He acknowledged though that not everyone was equally engaged in the process, including the host-country of the summit.

President Donald Trump's 2017 decision to pull the United States out of the Paris accord has cast a cloud over global efforts to rein in climate change.

But de Alba said the federal government in Washington was continuing to "work on a number of areas that are important to fight climate change," and that he hoped the US would participate in the September summit.

The UN climate envoy also hailed the work done by youth activists like Swedish teen Greta Thunberg, and said young people would have an important part to play at the meeting.

"We want them to be part of the solution, and not only take note of their very obviously... justified anger because of lack of action," he said.


Related Links
Climate Science News - Modeling, Mitigation Adaptation


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CLIMATE SCIENCE
Ireland declares climate emergency
Dublin (AFP) May 10, 2019
Ireland's parliament has become the second after Britain's to declare a climate emergency, a decision hailed by Swedish teenage environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg as "great news". An amendment to a parliamentary report declaring a "climate emergency" and calling on parliament "to examine how (the Irish government) can improve its response to the issue of biodiversity loss" was accepted without a vote late Thursday. Irish Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, who moved the amendment, called the dec ... read more

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