Fort soucieux de montrer leur leadership en matière de climat lors du sommet des Nations unies sur le climat à Glasgow lors de la COP26, les dirigeants du monde entier évoquent à nouveau d’ambitieux objectifs de réduction des émissions de carbone. Le président américain Joe Biden, par exemple, s’est fixé pour objectif de créer « un secteur de l’électricité sans pollution par le carbone d’ici 2035 et une économie à émissions nettes nulles au plus tard en 2050 ».

In their bids to showcase climate leadership at the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow (COP26), leaders of rich nations are once again talking of ambitious carbon reduction targets. President Biden, for example, has reaffirmed his goal of creating “a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.”

Huszonnégy év telt el a kiotói egyezmény elfogadása óta, amely az első, széndioxid-kibocsátás csökkentését ígérő globális megállapodás volt. Az emisszió mértéke azonban tovább növekedett, mivel egyetlen egy politikai vezető sem akar nagy költségeket megfizettetni az állampolgáraival. Amire szükség van, az az, hogy sokkal nagyobb hangsúlyt kell helyezni a zöld energia kutatására. Ha a világ egy olyan zöld energiát talált volna már fel, amely olcsóbb a fosszilis energiahordozókhoz képest, akkor megoldottuk volna a globális felmelegedés kérdését.

De cara a la Cumbre del Clima de la ONU en Glasgow (COP26), los líderes mundiales vuelven a hablar de objetivos ambiciosos para la reducción del carbono. El presidente de los Estados Unidos, Joe Biden, por ejemplo, ha fijado el objetivo de crear "un sector energético libre de contaminación por carbono para 2035 y una economía de emisiones netas cero a más tardar en 2050". https://www.milenio.com/opinion/bjorn-lomborg/columna-bjorn-lomborg/cop26-una-cumbre-ante-el-desafio-de-las-promesas-incumplidas

Activists constantly talk about the existential threat climate change poses and the deaths natural disasters inflict—but they never quite manage to total up these deaths. One reason is that it’s easier to bend the data about disaster frequency than to bend death statistics. Death tolls tell a very clear story: People are safer from climate-related disasters than ever before.

Campaigners have warned that net zero pledges made at COP26 are "doomed to fail" without regulation. But environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg tells Julia Hartley Brewer: "Young people are terrified but It's important to tell them there is less chance of them dying. This is not the end of the world." He also warns that world leaders at COP26 are trying to "force" net zero targets that will be "incredibly costly and politically impossible." 

As the COP26 summit meets over the next couple of weeks in Glasgow, we can all expect to be bombarded with disaster scenarios, replete with stories about our species’ imminent demise. Over the last couple of days, we have had Boris Johnson warning that it is “one minute to midnight” and Prince Charles claiming that this is “literally our last chance saloon”. And of course, Greta Thunberg has already made a few appearances of her own, accusing politicians of “pretending to take our future seriously” and saying that COP26 will “lead us nowhere”.

At the Glasgow climate conference, President Biden declared climate change an “existential threat to human existence as we know it.” No, it’s not. Climate change is not a meteor hurtling toward Earth to destroy humanity. Rather, it is a chronic, manageable condition humanity can live with. So argues Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.”

Världsledarna som nu träffas på COP26 i Glasgow måste investera mycket mer resurser på forskning och utveckling.

Scommettere sull’innovazione è la sola via percorribile perché la conferenza di Glasgow non sia l’ennesimo inutile vertice sul clima pieno di impegni che nessuno manterrà