Given the current climate commitments of countries around the world, the planet is on a catastrophic warming trajectory: from 2.5 to 2.9 degrees by 2100. It is the dramatic appeal that once again comes from an international body. This emerges from a report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which was published before the start of the Cop28 summit scheduled for November 30 in Dubai.
“We have lost our way on global warming” The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, which urges the international community to take “drastic climate action now.” “Today’s report on the emissions gap – warns Guterres – shows that if nothing changes, emissions in 2030 will be 22 billion tons higher than the 1.5 degree limit allows. That’s more or less the sum of the current annual emissions of USA, China and EU together“, emphasizes the UN Secretary-General, according to which the report shows that the emissions gap is more like a canyon.” In addition, “greenhouse gas emissions have reached historic highs, an increase of 1.2% compared to last year”.
Meanwhile, there is also another dramatic testimony to the climate emergency: the richest 1% of the world’s population, 77 million people, produces CO2 as do two-thirds of the poorest, 5 billion people. In this case, the non-governmental organization Oxfam reported on this, with a new report released ten days before the start of COP28. Oxfam is therefore proposing the introduction of a progressive tax on large wealth, paid by those who live in the richest countries and have the highest emissions. The report, prepared in collaboration with the Stockholm Environmental Institute (Sei), provides an analysis of emissions levels for different income groups in 2019, the year for which the most recent data is available.
On average, those in the highest-income 1% pollute as much in one year as a person in the remaining 99% of humanity would pollute in 1,500 years. Every year, says Oxfam, the emissions from these super-rich effectively wipe out the reduction in CO2 emissions achieved through the deployment of almost a million wind turbines. In 2030, carbon emissions from the richest 1% will be 22 times higher than the level consistent with the Paris Climate Agreement’s goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The dossier also denounces that emissions caused by the world’s richest 1% will cause 1.3 million deaths due to the effects of global warming, most of them by 2030.
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