C L I M AT E C H A N G E
18 · MONEY
ISSUE 55
A resident academic at the Faculty of Laws, University of Malta, Simone is Malta's Ambassador for Climate Action and chair of the Climate Action Board.
Generation Climate Prof. Simone Borg, Malta’s Ambassador for Climate Action and chair of the Institute for Climate Change and Sustainable Development, speaks about the Paris Agreement and what it takes to unleash the potential of such an agreement.
Way back in the mid-1970s, the scientific community was already buzzing with concern that fossil-fuel emissions generated by human activities were pumping so much greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that they were unbalancing its natural composition, leading to climate change.
leaders have championed the zero net emissions pledge but climate action requires heavy investment, which some low-income states simply cannot afford without external support while other countries are too busy fire-fighting more urgent needs such as eradicating poverty, famine and conflict.
Commonly referred to as GHGs, greenhouse gases are so called because they trap heat. Contrary to popular belief, they may not necessarily be “air pollutants”. The most common GHGs, carbon dioxide and methane, occur naturally in the atmosphere and are an essential component in the planet’s carbon cycle. It is their artificial increase caused by human activities that is leading to climate change. The Paris Agreement of 2015 aims precisely to set the clock back and return the planet to its natural state in terms of zero net emissions of GHGs that are induced by human activity.
In the higher-income states, solutions mainly depend upon changing consumption patterns, which cannot happen overnight, or upon new technology alternatives, which may not yet be commercially feasible or which undermine competitiveness, unless they are adopted across the board. In other words, sometimes doing what it takes to become climate-friendly is simply and literally a bus ride away but it may also lead to serious socioeconomic repercussions, if there is no just transition.
Nearly 50 years after the first scientific reports highlighting the climate change problems resulting from uncurbed fossil-fuel emissions, the conclusion of the Paris Agreement on December 12, 2015, was met with much fanfare as the long-awaited deal that would ultimately regulate state behaviour by taking the necessary action to mitigate and adapt to climate change. It is not surprising however that the jubilation of politicians, and the thousands of negotiators representing the various states, largely composed of legal advisers and technocrats, greatly contrasted with the lukewarm reception the same agreement was given by some scientists and NGOs that branded it with the (in)famous quip, “too little too late”. Since Paris, many political and business
The coming of age of Generation Climate, the movement initiated by Greta Thunberg, has managed to motivate tens of thousands of young and not so young people, to call upon both public and private decision-makers, to honour the Paris Agreement. The frustration expressed by the youth and children on strike is expressed in very simple terms: do what needs to be done, rather than keep pussy footing as to who should do what, by when. As is usual with youth, their patience is running thin and they are right, science demonstrates it is essential to achieve zero net emissions if we want to harness the increase in temperature to not more than 2 degrees Celsius and preferably to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century. The Paris Agreement is often criticised as being too weak to meet the urgency of the situation but as with any legal instrument, its
