Three former UNFCCC Executive Secretaries speak out.

On the 1st June three former UN climate chiefs, Christian Figueres (2010-16), Yvo de Beor (2006-10) and Michael Zammit Cutajar (1991-2002) wrote a joint article in the Guardian. They state that in February the world’s governments endorsed the IPPC report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability and thus the statement that…

“The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and planetary health…. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.” 

Despite this the trajectory of current worldwide climate policies would lead to a temperature rise of between 2.7C and a catastrophic 3.6C above pre-industrial levels. Governments can’t act as if other crises such as health, poverty and security can be tackled whilst ignoring the climate crisis, they are interlinked. Perhaps, they argue… 

If science has not persuaded most governments to act, perhaps economics will. The IPCC provides clear evidence that societies will be more prosperous in a world where climate change is constrained, than in one left to burn. In the energy sector, evidence of the zero-carbon transition is all around us. Wind and solar generation shows compound growth of about 20% a year and is cheaper almost everywhere than the alternatives. Electric car sales doubled between 2020 and 2021.

Unless one is invested in fossil fuels, there is now no reason not to take the clean energy path. Many corporate actors understand the need for early action on this front. But governments still need to incentivise the transition. The evolving Just Energy Transition packages may yet offer an investment pathway that can accelerate deployment in emerging and developing countries. Corporate action towards other targets such as reduction of methane emissions, also needs to be encouraged.

Carbon pricing, we might add, would reinforce the argument for decarbonisation if it applied in a way that enables forward planning and enhances the economic well being of the majority of people, as with Climate Income.