2023-07-31 11:40:09
This summer again, extreme climatic events are linked and unleashed everywhere in the world, at the risk of placing political leaders in the position of commentators of the disaster rather than lookouts. Global warming is a “existential threat”said Thursday, July 27, the American president, Joe Biden, while more than 100 million Americans are facing record heat. The world is now in the“era of boiling” and no longer in that “warming up”launched for his part the secretary general of the UN, Antonio Guterres.
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Marked by an unusual series of spectacular episodes such as record rains in Australia, heat waves in India and Pakistan, the collapse of a glacier in the Alps, the year 2022 had contributed to accelerating awareness throughout the planet. 2023 appears as that of confirmation. In Death Valley (California), the thermometer rose to 56°C. In China it reached 52°C, in Sardinia 48°C. According to climatologists, July will be the hottest month on record. There were nearly 62,000 deaths in Europe in the summer of 2022 due to the heat. How many will there be this year?
In 2015, the Paris agreement set itself the objective of limiting the rise in mercury to well below 2°C and if possible to 1.5°C by the end of the century. Eight years later, the gap is widening between the awareness of the dramatic consequences of the climate crisis on food production, water supply, human health, national economies, the survival of a large part of the natural world and the response to it: the voluntary commitments of States put the planet on a warming trajectory of 2.5°C at the end of the century, if they are kept, or even 2.8°C if current policies continue.
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Fossil fuel subsidies
No one underestimates the challenge that the implementation of the ecological transition represents for governments, which attacks rents, upsets economic interests and calls for a complete change of model. Voluntary plans have been initiated in recent years, particularly in the United States and the European Union, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are the main cause of global warming. Small steps have been taken, but they remain well below what should be done with regard to the “existential threat” now put forward by Joe Biden.
The International Energy Agency announced Thursday, July 27 that the world consumption of coal, the first source of emissions, should as in 2022 flirt with a « level record » This year. Global oil demand is also heading for a peak in 2023. State subsidies to fossil fuels have never been so high as in 2022, while the oil and gas majors are making record profits since the war in Ukraine. It is this guilty perseverance of the world before that Antonio Guterres pointed out by declaring: “The air is unbreathable, the heat is unbearable. Fossil fuel profit levels and climate inaction are unacceptable. »
The resistance of the Gulf countries and China largely explains the failure of COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh in November 2022. The issue of phasing out fossil fuels should again dominate the debates of COP28, which will be held in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) from November 30 to December 12. Everything pushes to accelerate the process, nothing, alas, guarantees it. At the time of reckoning, no one will be able to say that he did not know.
See our large format: Understanding global warming: how we have upset the planet
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