China Daily: Climate change leaves us no time for talking without action
China Daily |
Updated: 2018-12-04 17:08
The United Nations Climate Change Conference opened on Nov 3 in Katowice of Poland, we sincerely hope it will no longer serve up just a diet of rhetoric and instead produce a down-to-earth action plan in which all countries do their bit, according to a China Daily editorial.
A UN report revealed last week that the goal to ensure fossil fuel emissions peak by 2020 will hardly be attained as the amount of carbon dioxide emitted worldwide in 2017 had actually increased rather than decreased. Another report by the World Meteorological Organization said that the past four years have been the warmest on record and warned that the global temperatures could easily rise by 4-5 C by 2100.
That requires the major countries to demonstrate the political will to agree on ways to implement the promises they made in the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit temperature rises to avert runaway global warming.
Those developed countries in particular are expected to show their political will and help their developing counterparts with both funds and technologies to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide.
The clock is ticking on a climate bomb whose chain reaction and fallout should it go off would have catastrophic consequences for all life on Earth. There is still time to defuse it, but not much. There is no time left for talking, what is needed is action — from everyone, the editorial said.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference opened on Nov 3 in Katowice of Poland, we sincerely hope it will no longer serve up just a diet of rhetoric and instead produce a down-to-earth action plan in which all countries do their bit, according to a China Daily editorial.
A UN report revealed last week that the goal to ensure fossil fuel emissions peak by 2020 will hardly be attained as the amount of carbon dioxide emitted worldwide in 2017 had actually increased rather than decreased. Another report by the World Meteorological Organization said that the past four years have been the warmest on record and warned that the global temperatures could easily rise by 4-5 C by 2100.
That requires the major countries to demonstrate the political will to agree on ways to implement the promises they made in the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit temperature rises to avert runaway global warming.
Those developed countries in particular are expected to show their political will and help their developing counterparts with both funds and technologies to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide.
The clock is ticking on a climate bomb whose chain reaction and fallout should it go off would have catastrophic consequences for all life on Earth. There is still time to defuse it, but not much. There is no time left for talking, what is needed is action — from everyone, the editorial said.
