Guest essay by Eric Worrall
What is wrong with a picture of people wearing the products of an energy intensive high tech civilisation demanding more climate action?
A million young people urge governments to prioritise climate crisis
World leaders will meet for Climate Adaptation Summit to consider how to adapt to extreme weather
Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
Fri 22 Jan 2021 11.01 AEDTMore than 1 million young people around the world have urged governments to prioritise measures to protect against the ravages of climate breakdown during the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
World leaders are due to meet by video link on Monday to consider how to adapt to the extreme weather, wildfires and floods that have become more common as temperatures rise. Ban Ki-moon, the former UN secretary general, will lead the Climate Adaptation Summit, and leaders including Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Narendra Modi are expected to attend.
Ban said: “We must remember there is no vaccine to fix our changing climate. As climate change impacts continue to intensify, we must put adaptation on an equal footing with [cutting emissions]. Building resilience to climate change impacts is not a nice-to-have, it is a must, if we are to live in a sustainable and secure world.”
He said efforts to repair the damage done to economies by Covid-19 were in danger of compounding the problem. “I am deeply concerned that in domestic stimulus plans dirty measures that increase carbon emissions outnumber green initiatives by four to one,” he said.
Patrick Verkooijen, the chief executive of the Global Centre on Adaptation, said it was time to redirect spending. “As governments begin to invest trillions of dollars to recover from the pandemic, they have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a more resilient, climate-smart future – to build adaptation in the next round of fiscal stimulus,” he said. “A coordinated green resilient infrastructure push with the right policy incentives could boost global GDP by 0.7% in the first 15 years and create millions of jobs.”
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To be fair, looking at their website, the Global Centre for Adaption seems to be steering carefully around calling for emissions cuts. Their emphasis appears to be more on increasing resilience to the predicted rise in storms and rate of sea level rise which global warming is supposed to bring.
I wonder if this could be a new strategy by the UN to build a broader consensus in the USA for shovelling taxpayers’ money into UN programmes.
Demanding money for for other countries to build useless renewables is an obviously divisive issue, even some Democrat senators might vote against that. But asking for funding to say improve resilience against flooding in Bangladesh or whatever is less likely to receive an automatic “no”.
Of course, once the money leaves US shores, how the money is spent may differ significantly from the justifications provided to the US government to raise the money.
via Watts Up With That?
January 23, 2021 at 08:59AM