Rome, Nov. 10 (LaPresse) – “I hope that a major agreement will be reached, but I am not getting my hopes up.” This is what Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European climate change observatory, said in an interview with Repubblica on the day COP31 gets underway in Antalya. “COPs – he explains – are an opportunity for science to present its data, but above all they are political negotiations that reflect the world we live in, geopolitical pressures and economic issues. I am not an expert in politics or economics, but it does not seem to me that the conditions are in place to make significant progress, as happened in Paris in 2015. I see a world that is much more divided than it was 11 years ago.” According to Buontempo, “from a scientific point of view, the solution is obvious: reduce greenhouse gas emissions until we reach net zero emissions. Until we achieve this goal, we can expect nothing other than a rise in temperatures. Centuries of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions have altered the balance between the energy coming from the sun and the energy we release back into space in the form of radiation. As long as we do not eliminate this small but constant release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we can expect nothing else. This would be achieved above all if we stopped burning coal, oil and natural gas. Electrification in itself is not necessarily enough to make a difference. If we all drive electric cars but buy our electricity from a coal-fired power plant, we have simply shifted the problem from one place to another; we have not solved it.”
Climate, expert: “I hope for a major agreement at COP31, but I am not getting my hopes up”
Rome, Nov. 10 (LaPresse) – “I hope that a major agreement will be reached, but I am not getting my hopes up.” This is what Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European climate change observatory, said in an interview with Repubblica on the day COP31 gets underway in Antalya. “COPs – he explains – are an opportunity for science to present its data, but above all they are political negotiations that reflect the world we live in, geopolitical pressures and economic issues. I am not an expert in politics or economics, but it does not seem to me that the conditions are in place to make significant progress, as happened in Paris in 2015. I see a world that is much more divided than it was 11 years ago.” According to Buontempo, “from a scientific point of view, the solution is obvious: reduce greenhouse gas emissions until we reach net zero emissions. Until we achieve this goal, we can expect nothing other than a rise in temperatures. Centuries of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions have altered the balance between the energy coming from the sun and the energy we release back into space in the form of radiation. As long as we do not eliminate this small but constant release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we can expect nothing else. This would be achieved above all if we stopped burning coal, oil and natural gas. Electrification in itself is not necessarily enough to make a difference. If we all drive electric cars but buy our electricity from a coal-fired power plant, we have simply shifted the problem from one place to another; we have not solved it.”