(Headline USA) Humanity has only two years left “to save the world” by making dramatic changes in the way it spews heat-trapping emissions—and it has even less time to act to get the finances behind such a massive shift, declared the head of the United Nations climate agency on Wednesday, the latest example of the globalist organizations shameless exploitation of climate alarmism.
“We still have a chance to make greenhouse gas emissions tumble, with a new generation of national climate plans. But we need these stronger plans, now,” UN executive climate secretary Simon Stiell said in a speech at the Chatham House think tank in London.
Stiell acknowledged that his panicmongering may sound a bit melodramatic.
But with governments of the world facing a 2025 deadline for new and stronger plans to curb carbon pollution, nearly half of the world’s populations voting in elections this year, and crucial global finance meetings later this month in Washington, Stiell said drastic action over the next two years was “essential.”
“Who exactly has two years to save the world? The answer is every person on this planet,” Stiell said, appearing to make the appeal directly to voters in the U.S. and other countries where economic turmoil might entice some to abandon climate priorities.
While some see the Biden administration’s refusal to pursue domestic energy production as a major drag on the economy, raising overhead costs for retailers that ultimately get passed on to consumers, Stiell insisted that climate change was the true culprit behind runaway inflation and other economic concerns.
“More and more people want climate action right across societies and political spectrums, in large part because they are feeling the impacts of the climate crisis in their everyday lives and their household budgets,” he insisted.
“Cutting fossil fuel pollution will mean better health and huge savings for governments and households alike,” he added.
Not everyone was convinced such warnings will be helpful.
“‘Two years to save the world’ is meaningless rhetoric—at best, it’s likely to be ignored, at worst, it will be counterproductive,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who is also a professor of international affairs.
But the underlying purpose in stoking climate fears was less about taking meaningful policy measures at the individual level and more about generating massive amounts of money for the UN’s wealth-redistribution effort.
Failure to act on reducing fossil fuels emissions “will further entrench the gross inequalities between the world’s richest and poorest countries and communities,” Stiell claimed.
Stiell’s speech came just ahead of meetings of the World Bank and other big multinational development institutions, where poorer nations, led by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and Kenyan President William Ruto, are pushing for major reforms in the systems that loan money to poor nations, especially those hit by natural disasters.
In conjunction with that push, Stiell called for “a quantum leap this year in climate finance.”
He called for debt relief for the countries that need it the most, saying they were spending $400 billion on debt financing instead of preparing for and preventing future climate change.
He called for more financial aid, not just loans, and more money from different groups like banks, the International Maritime Organization, and the G20, the world’s 20 most powerful economies. Those countries are responsible for 80% of the world’s heat-trapping emissions, he claimed.
“G20 leadership must be at the core of the solution, as it was during the great financial crisis,” Stiell said.
“Every day, finance ministers, CEOs, investors, and development bankers direct trillions of dollars,” he continued. “It’s time to shift those dollars from the energy and infrastructure of the past, towards that of a cleaner, more resilient future—and to ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable countries benefit.”
Officials said the climate finance problem needs to be fixed by the end of the year with November’s climate negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, a crucial point.
With so many elections and places where democracies on the brink, “climate finance related to carbon policy is on the line,” said Nancy Lindborg, president of the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, at the Skoll World Forum, an ideas conference in Oxford, England.
Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare said global emissions must be halved by the end of the decade to meet the Paris climate accord’s ambition of capping global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).
“Governments are nowhere near that, and disastrously many are still supporting new fossil fuel development,” Hare said.
“We need to see a massive strengthening of action now—faster ramping up of renewables, electric vehicles and batteries—if we’re to get serious reductions by 2030,” he continued. “The longer we wait, the more it will cost.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
