According to the scientist, the president does not agree with the science developed in his country, a benchmark in climate research
Beyond mitigating greenhouse gases per se, there is a major challenge in combating the climate crisis: no matter how serious people believe it is, democracies continue to elect denialist politicians. As is happening in the United States, with Donald Trump, and in Brazil at the level of deputies, senators, councilors and mayors. This is what climatologist Carlos Nobre, an international reference in the sector, said in an interview Earth during the event TEDx Ilhabela.
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In the case of the United States, he cites Trump’s “nonsense” that the climate crisis is a matter of natural variability and not something caused by humans. “Why is the world population aware of the risk of the climate emergency and yet continues to elect populist politicians who don’t want to change anything?” asks the expert.
“The United States is the country that has and has had the largest number of climate change scientists in history. It is the country that has contributed the most to the IPCC reports [Painel Intergovernamental sobre Mudanças Climáticas da ONU]. How is it possible to have a president who disagrees with American science? It’s hard to understand,” he adds.
When Donald Trump took office as president, he signed an executive order withdrawing the country from the Paris Agreement, just as he had done during his first term. The issue is still waiting to be made official and, at the same time, the country remains a member of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But, in addition to bureaucratic issues, his government has promoted climate denialism.
Emergency question
Carlos Nobre participated in the preparation of the first IPCC report, published in 1990. To date, five other reports have been published, the last of which refers to the period 2021-2022. “Climate science has expanded a lot around the world and these IPCC reports clearly show that we are in an emergency. We don’t even call it climate change anymore, we call it a climate emergency,” he explains.
The expert also recalls that the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as heat waves, droughts, forest fires and excessive rainfall are increasing exponentially throughout the world. “It’s due to global warming, which we are responsible for, it’s not a natural phenomenon,” he says, citing greenhouse gases generated by burning fossil fuels, deforestation and agriculture.
“We are responsible for all these extreme phenomena that are breaking records all over the world. We have a huge responsibility and science shows it very clearly” – Carlos Nobre
To change the scenario it is necessary to reduce emissions “very quickly”. And, in parallel, he cites the importance of creating a large movement for forest restoration around the world, considering the potential of forests to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Given the situation, he stresses: “COP30 must be the most important of the 30 COPs, so that all countries commit to reducing emissions very quickly.” The Conference of the Parties will be held in November, in Belém.
Although it is clear to the scientific community that the main point to be debated is fossil fuel emissions, it was only at COP28, in Dubai, as Nobre explains, that the sector admitted for the first time that it agreed with the energy transition. A slow transition.
“So, in this COP, now, the fossil fuel sector has to embrace a superfast energy transition to reduce emissions. Today 75% of global emissions come from burning fossil fuels, and even more. But there is also a transition to renewable energy, solar, wind, green hydrogen. So, this potential exists.”
According to the researcher, the use of fossil fuels is also the main cause of urban pollution in the world. “Urban pollution around the world causes six to seven million deaths. In highly polluted cities, like São Paulo, life expectancy is two to four years shorter.” So, as he points out, talking about eliminating fossil fuels means talking about fighting the climate emergency and also about improving the health of billions of people around the world.
Source: Terra

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