The world faces a new form of climate denial – not the dismissal of climate science, but it is a concerted attack on the idea that the economy can be reorganized to combat the crisis, and the head of the global climate talks warned.
André Corrêa Do LagoThe veteran Brazilian diplomat who will direct the United Nations summit for this year, COP30, believes that his biggest function is to confront the attempt from some of the interests gained to prevent climate policies aimed at turning the global economy into a carbon low foot.
“There is a new type of opposition to climate work. We are facing the reputation of climate policies. I don’t think we are facing climate denial,” he said, referring to the growing desperate attempts to pretend that there is no consensus on climate science that has afflicted climate work over the past thirty years. “It is not a scientific denial, it is an economic denial.”
This can be economic denial With the same The reason for a lot of delay, such as repeated attempts to deny climate science in previous years, warned in an exclusive interview with the Guardian.
Since the climate crisis has collected a pace, temperatures have risen and the effects of harsh weather became more clear, scientists have been able to draw links between greenhouse gas emissions and our effects on this planet are ever more clearly. So the argument has turned, as Corrêa Do Lago believes, from undermining or distorting science into attempts to confront climate policy.
“It is not possible to be [scientific] Denial at this stage, after everything that happened in recent years. Therefore, there is a migration of scientific denial to denial that economic measures against climate change can be good for the economy and for people. “
The rise of popular politicians around the world closed a violent reaction against the climate policy, clearly in the presidency Donald Trump In the United States, where it began to cancel policies aimed at promoting renewable energy, lowering greenhouse gases, and dismantling all forms of climate -sponsored climate institutions, including scientific research laboratories.
Corrêa do Lago wants to stimulate a new global effort to persuade people who reshape the economy away from relying on fossil fuels and towards the future of clean energy for all people. “The new populism is trying to show it [that tackling the climate crisis does not work]He said: “It is the transformation of those who believe in combating climate change to show and prove that fighting climate change is possible, and that it can bring economic advantages and better quality than life.”
Corrêa Do Lago is an economist through training – the smallest of the five brothers, all of whom have become economists. “My mother was horrific from our lack of originality,” he said jokingly.
He was a professional diplomat, as he joined the Brazilian foreign service in 1983 and previously worked as an ambassador to India and Japan. He is also a veterans in the police talks – the “annual conference of the parties”, which will be held this year in Belem, near the Amazon escape, in November.
“Most of the answers should come from the economy,” said Korea de Lago. “Because now we have enough science, enough clarification on how climate change affects people’s lives. Now we need answers [in the form of policy measures]. We need economists to gather. “
Over the past two decades, economists began facing the climate crisis challenge, after the 2006 historical review of Nicholas Stern, the former World Bank’s chief economist, who has been found to be one of the cheapest treatment for emissions from allowing them to pass without Rod. This contradicts the conclusions of some former economists, who claimed that he is not worth trying to stay away from fossil fuels, or will be very expensive.
Since then, multiple reports have proven the same point. Recently, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Development Program have produced a joint report this year, with the final issue next month, indicating this Treating the climate crisis would increase financially from economic growthInstead of the necessary cost.
But a lot of prevailing thinking in the economy does not take into account the climate crisis. Most governments that are budgets, for example, do not include climatic effects in their estimates, and do not work on business. Many economic estimates of climate damage are very modest. For Corrêa Do Lago, this shows that more should be done.
“The climate has not been integrated into the economic theory in a satisfactory manner,” he said. “It is a very annoying element.”
Corrêa do Lago faces an important 196 countries are involved to produce new national plans to greenhouse gas emissions During the next few months, at the same time, Brazil is already struggling with Logistical challenges From the COP30 contract in a rainy forest. There was controversy earlier this year about a road that was built across the forest to the city, although the Brazilian officials said the road had already been planned before COP30 was granted to Belém. There are also concerns about the environmental credentials of the Brazilian president, as his government continues to approve mines and oil drilling projects.
But these are pale compared to the opposite geopolitical winds. Trump will not attend the talks He withdrew from the Paris Agreement, and his actions encouraged the countries that want to come out of progress. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Russia, Argentina, Venezuela and a group of other countries, including gerstate and folklore, are all harmful. Other major economies may be publicly less disturbing but may also shorten their obligations, with harmful effects.
Each country is supposed to prepare a specific contribution at the national level (NDC), a complex document that defines goals on greenhouse gas emissions until 2035 and sometimes exceeds it, and the policies that aim to confront them. But so far only a few countries – do not include the European Union, China, Japan or India – have presented NDCS, although the deadline passed in February.
The UK plan was presented last yearAlong with Brazil.
Brazil and hosts last year, Azerbaijan, are working on a “road map” that will determine what countries should do to achieve financial goals that will also be a major issue. The outline will be ready before governments gather in the Amazon in November.
For Corrêa Do Lago, hope is for the world to meet to solve the existential crisis of the climate in the way in which governments did 40 years ago to address the opening in the ozone layer. “The climate change is much more complicated, the gases work much longer, and the effect on the economy is greater without limits than eliminating gases that exhaust the ozone layer. But the ozone layer is the only example of the phenomenon that links human work can change the direction [of an environmental crisis]”
If we fail? “The alternative is to accelerate climate change.”
