Achim Steiner on Climate Change

Achim Steiner on Climate Change

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, spoke to Christian Schwägerl of SPIEGEL about the current state of global climate negotiations ahead of the UN conference in Durban, South Africa. Achim Steiner’s views are summed up below.

If emissions aren't soon uncoupled from economic growth, the earth will warm to a state that will threaten our prosperity. That's exactly why climate policy is neither futile nor defeated. On the contrary, it's obviously just at the beginning. Flood disasters like the one that recently occurred in Thailand must not become routine. Anyone who dismisses the risk of climate change today does so out of deficient scientific understanding or very shortsighted economic interests. New findings show that climate researchers have more likely underestimated than overestimated the speed and magnitude of the changes. It's not true that climate protection measures would make energy unaffordable or cost jobs. The "Green Economy" is already creating hundreds of thousands of jobs around the world. But each day economic and business arguments are misused to frighten citizens and consumers about making the necessary changes in this direction. Hundreds of billions have been mobilized practically overnight to bail out banks. We can also afford a cross-generation task such as climate protection.

We're still far away from what needs to happen. But China has managed to separate its economic growth from emissions. And the European Union has more or less reached its goal of reducing emissions by 20 percent compared to 1990 levels. It would now be economically sensible for the EU to raise its goal to 30 percent. The United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 2012 will provide a chance to show that there are alternatives to financial and ecological overextension. Hopefully it will be a productive global economic summit.

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