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Exactly five years after the historic agreement on the Paris climate accord, this UN summit was supposed to send a signal: Even in the corona pandemic, progress is being made in protecting the climate. More than 70 heads of state and government announced concrete new goals in the fight against the climate crisis on Saturday, or at least literally emphasized how important this was. The Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, asks the heads of state and government to declare a “climate emergency”.
“If we don’t change course, we could be heading for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than three degrees this century,” Guterres said. It is already 1.2 degrees warmer than before industrialization. The consequences were catastrophic. They have been visible for a long time: droughts, heat waves, devastating wildfires, hurricanes, floods, melting ice around the poles and in the mountains.
The UN secretary general wanted to generate pressure with Great Britain, Chile, France and Italy in the year Corona 2020, in which the great UN climate conference had to be canceled. The Glasgow summit will not take place until the end of 2021 – as a replacement there was a one-day digital “Climate Ambition Summit” (summit for climate ambition). Only those who, in the opinion of the hosts, had enough to show, were invited.
2020 should actually be the year when all Paris Agreement states deliver new and improved national climate protection plans ahead of the Glasgow climate summit. This should happen every five years in the future, in the middle is an inventory that makes it clear whether the plans are sufficient. Corona has delayed the schedule a bit. But more than 40 states used the summit to announce new plans, Guterres praised.
China promises a lot
Some examples of the promises: Barbados and Maldives no longer want to emit greenhouse gases by 2030, Pakistan does not want to build new coal-fired power plants. China, the country with the highest greenhouse gas emissions in the world, wants to more strongly decouple its growth from emissions, expand green electricity, and, this has long been known, start reducing CO2 emissions before 2030.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, host of the next big summit, reiterated his commitment to cut emissions by 68 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
Von der Leyen: “Ambitious”
The head of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was able to announce yesterday’s agreement on a more ambitious EU climate target. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged € 500 million for climate projects in poorer countries.
Thunberg: empty words
Climate activist Greta Thunberg was tough on the digital climate summit on the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate agreement. “At the Climate Ambition Summit, leaders celebrate their shameless loopholes, empty words, inadequate long-term goals and the theft of current and future living conditions, and call it ‘ambition,'” the Swede wrote on Twitter on Saturday. .
“There are no climate leaders. The only ones who can change that are you and me. Together,” Thunberg said.
