A top climate advocate has highlighted the need to act immediately to reduce the worst impacts of climate change and suggested that oil producing countries should diversify their economies. John Kerry, the United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and Former Secretary of State stressed the point while interacting Saturday with Nick Clark, environment editor, Al Jazeera English during the Newsmaker Interview of the Doha Forum 2022.Describing his efforts to raise awareness about the serious implications of climate change at several COP summits and the efforts to get assurance from member states to reduce green house gas emission, Kerry said, “During our COP summit in Glasgow, the issue was at the forefront again. If everybody does what they promised in Paris COP summit, we could actually hold the temperature by 1.8 degrees by 2050. But the problem is that we are not doing everything we told in the summit.”
He said that several countries in Europe are taking steps to move away from fossil fuels and many countries have already made significant progress in renewable energy sector. “The best scientists in the world repeatedly over the 30 years and now more dramatically, have been telling us that we have these numbers of years to make credible decisions and implement them to avoid the worst consequences of climate crisis. Let me emphasis it. This is not to avoid the crisis but to avoid the worst consequences of the crisis and it is avoidable only, if we cut the emissions by 45% between now and 2030,” Kerry said.
He also said that some of the leading economies have promised to reduce emissions rapidly and transition to green energy. “There must be investments in these transitions to stop the loss of trillions of dollars of damage that far exceeds the money that is invested. No government alone can have such huge amounts to invest. The only way to get there is to get the private sector fully involved in the transition. It needs that we have to be more creative,” remarked Kerry.
The climate advocate highlighted the drastic rise in temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic regions and the rise in temperatures globally year after year suggesting that global temperature is set for rise year after year and rapid actions are necessary to meet the challenges. He also suggested that countries that mainly depend on oil as the main source of economy should think of diversifying its economies to face the outcomes of the transition. “Diversify, think not only about being an oil and gas company but as an energy company. Many are doing it. This is doable and we have to look at the reality. This is happening and the only issue is- if this is happening fast enough. What is happening is that there will be new methodologies to deal with the problems,” concluded Kerry.
