The 25th edition of the United Nations Climate Summit (COP25) is being inaugurated today in Madrid, with the purpose of “laying the foundations to a new climatic action phase.” The event, which brings together 50 heads of state and government, delegations from almost 200 countries and international organizations, was to be held in Santiago de Chile, but President Sebastián Piñera suspended it due to the protests.
The summit will end on December 13th, two weeks before 2020 begins, the year in which some 70 countries took on the obligation to increase what is technically called nationally determined contributions (NDC) to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions and thus help halt climate change. This was a commitment of the United Nations Secretary-General’s World Summit on Climate Action held in September with governments, civil society organizations and international organizations. At the same meeting, 65 countries pledged to work towards zero emissions by 2050.
From 2012, the nearly 200 countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed to take action to combat climate change. From there was born the Paris Agreement, which entered into force in November 2016. The countries that signed it pledged to take action to maintain the global temperature increase of the planet at less than 2 degrees Celsius, specifically 1.5 degrees Celsius during this century.
However, the most recent United Nations report on the disparity in 2019 emissions, presented on November 26, concludes that greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at a rate of 1.5% per year.
At this rate, even if all the NDCs are met, there is a 66% chance that the Earth’s temperature will have raised by 3.2 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century. The countries, especially those that emit the most harmful gases into the atmosphere, would have to multiply their efforts by five to reverse the devastating effects of climate change: the increase in the planet’s temperature to more than 1.5 degrees Celsius would kill all corals and would seriously affect the natural cycles that keep marine and terrestrial biodiversity alive and in balance; the risk of floods would rise 170%; 28% of the planet’s population would be exposed to strong heat waves; the rise in sea level would affect 49 million people in 2100. These are data given by Mar Gómez, PhD in Physics with a specialization in Meteorology and Climatology, to National Geographic Spain.
2018 was a record year, according to the UN report, in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels for energy consumption and industry, “which constitute most of the total emissions” of greenhouse gases: these emissions increased 2% to “a level never seen before”.
Time is running out. The UN report makes it clear. As actions have been insufficient, measures to meet the global temperature targets of 2 and 1.5 degrees Celsius will have to be much more drastic.
“If strong climate action had been taken in 2010, the annual reductions needed to meet the emission levels projected in the 2°C and 1.5°C scenarios would have averaged only 0.7 and 3.3% per year. However, since this was not the case, emissions will have to fall by almost 3% per year by 2020 to meet the 2°C target and by around 7% per year for the 1.5°C target,” the report says.
If greenhouse gas emissions were to reach a “height” in 2020, the year that is about to begin, in 2030 and 2050, countries would have to reduce these emissions by 25% and 55% more than in 2018, “if we want the world to take the lowest cost trajectory with a view to limiting global warming to 2º C and 1.5º C, respectively”.
U.S. Remains Among Top Polluters
According to the report, the most polluting countries are, by amount of emissions, China, the United States, the European Union countries, India, the Russian Federation and Japan. The members of the G20 –the countries with the richest economies on the planet — generate 75% of the world’s greenhouse gases.
The United States abandoned the Paris Agreement as mandated by Donald Trump’s government in 2017. However, the U.S. remains in the UNFCCC.
An official delegation of the Trump government is at the COP25 to defend the country’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement, EFE Verde reports, but representatives and senators are also in attendance, with Nancy Pelosi, president of the country’s House of Representatives, leading them.
Our delegation’s message at the opening of #COP25 in Madrid: We’re still in it. #TimeForAction @TheCVF pic.twitter.com/atgDnwm6gR
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) December 2, 2019
In response to Trump’s exit from the Paris Agreement, 24 U.S. states joined the U.S. Climate Alliance to take measures to reduce gas emissions by 26-28% in 2025 compared to 2005, another EFE Verde dispatch reports.
The states members of the alliance are Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Kansas and Louisiana, with Democratic governors, and Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont, with Republican governors.
Latin America
Three Latin American countries –Argentina, Brazil and Mexico– are members of the G20, which make them part of the 75% of the planet’s total emissions indicated in the UN report.
But in December 2018, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) concluded in another study that the region emits less than 10% of total toxic emissions into the atmosphere — the per capita emissions of these countries represent a third of the emissions of Europe or the United States –, but “it is especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to its geographic and climatic situation, its socioeconomic, demographic and institutional condition, and the high sensitivity to climate of its natural assets, such as forests and biodiversity.”
These negative effects are the rising of sea levels, the changing of rainfall patterns, the melting of glaciers, changes in agricultural regions –30% of the territory of Latin America and the Caribbean, 576 million hectares, constitute the world’s largest reserves of arable land, and climate change affects crop cycles and their yields — and the reappearance of diseases that were eradicated, according to the UN Information Center (UNIC) Mexico.
The ECLAC report indicates that climate change also modifies soil moisture. “All of the above affects the availability of water for human consumption and economic activities, such as agriculture and industry.”
The energy sector in Latin America and the Caribbean is responsible for 5% of greenhouse gas emissions. Current power generation systems are vulnerable to climate change. And yet the region has 25% of the planet’s hydroelectric potential, “a high wind potential and high availability of geothermal energy.”
The region has lost 96 million hectares of its forests in the last 15 years due to human activity.
“In order to achieve a decoupling between emissions and the level of development of the economy, it is necessary to adopt measures that contribute to reducing energy demand and changing energy sources,” the report concludes.