Guest essay by Eric Worrall
What is wrong with a picture of people wearing the products of an energy-intensive high-tech civilization and demanding more climate protection?
A million young people are calling on governments to make the climate crisis a priority
The world’s leaders will meet at the Climate Adaptation Summit to consider how to adapt to extreme weather
Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
Fri 22 Jan 2021 11.01 AEDT
More than 1 million young people around the world have urged governments to prioritize measures to protect against the effects of the collapse of climate change while recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.
World leaders will meet on Monday via video link to consider how to adapt to the extreme weather, forest fires and floods that are more common as temperatures rise. Ban Ki-moon, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, will chair the climate change adaptation summit, which will be attended by leaders such as Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Narendra Modi.
Ban said, “We need to remember that there is no vaccine to improve our changing climate. As the effects of climate change continue to intensify, we need to equate adaptation [cutting emissions]. Strengthening resilience to the effects of climate change is not nice, it is a must if we are to live in a sustainable and safe world. “
He said efforts to repair the damage Covid-19 has caused to economies are in danger of exacerbating the problem. “I am deeply concerned that dirty measures that increase carbon emissions in domestic stimulus plans are outstripping the number of green initiatives by four to one,” he said.
Patrick Verkooijen, executive director of the Global Center on Adaptation, said it was time to redirect spending. “As governments start investing trillions of dollars to recover from the pandemic, they have a unique opportunity to build a more resilient, climate-friendly future – to build adjustment in the next round of fiscal stimulus,” he said. “A coordinated green infrastructure boost with the right policy incentives could increase global GDP by 0.7% in the first 15 years and create millions of jobs.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/22/a-million-young-people-urge-governments-to-prioritise-climate-crisis
To be fair, the Global Center for Adaption appears to be careful on its website to call for emissions cuts. Rather, their focus seems to be on increasing resilience to the predicted rise in storms and the rate of sea level rise that global warming is said to be bringing with it.
I wonder if this could be a new UN strategy to get a broader consensus in the US that taxpayers’ money goes into UN programs.
Asking other countries for money to build useless renewable energies is an obviously controversial issue and even some Democratic senators could vote against it. However, ask for financial assistance to improve Bangladesh’s resilience to flooding, or whatever is less likely to get an automatic “no”.
Once the money leaves the US coast, the way the money is spent can differ significantly from the justifications given to the US government for raising the money.
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