COP26. History of environmental issues in Portugal expects only “palliatives” from the climate summit – Observer
Former Portuguese government official linked to the environment Carlos Pimenta says he does not expect great results from the climate summit that starts this Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland, but considers the obligation of the European Union (EU) to present tough and innovative measures.
“I’m not waiting for results, I’m waiting for palliatives”, said Carlos Pimenta, historical of environmental issues in Portugal, in an interview with Lusa regarding the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (COP26) which will take place in Glasgow between this Sunday and November 12th and qualify if attributed to combating global warming and adapting to climate change.
Skeptical of the overall result, Carlos Pimenta is, however, more demanding about the EU, whether within the territory or in relation to products he buys from third countries, or in relation to the financial system, so as not to finance more investments with a high carbon footprint.
Before traveling to COP26, G20 leaders agree to limit global warming to 1.5ºC
For Carlos Pimenta, it is the EU’s obligation, whatever the outcome of COP26, to take precursory measures for global change, “because without them the world is heading towards catastrophe”.
Former Secretary of State for the Environment, deputy in the Assembly of the Republic, MEP and spokesman for the European Parliament for many years, Carlos Pimenta guarantees that the good work that an EU has been doing in the fight against climate change is real.
But, in the interview with Lusa, he confesses to being scared, not by the planet, but by the beings that live on it, namely one of the most fragile, Man, who is the cause of the acceleration of climate change.
With a degree in chemical engineering, Carlos Pimenta emphasizes that the laws of physics and nature are not violated, that the climate results from the distribution of energy that comes from the sun in the interaction with various systems, that the Earth is a dynamic equilibrium, as it is also the human body.
“In engineering we know that a system in equilibrium, taken to an extreme, goes through a catastrophic moment until reaching another equilibrium. The fall of a bridge is that moment, the pile of stones in the river is the new balance. But poor people who traveled on the bridge when it fell”.
Carlos Pimenta uses the example of the bridge to explain that the action of Man on Earth is changing the balance of the planet, whose adjustment capacity has limits, and at some point, it is not known when or how long it will last, he will seek another balance . “And we’re all over the bridge.”
And don’t think, he adds, that the changes that human beings cause on Earth are only at the level of the remittances of gases with the greenhouse effect from the burning of fossils. Carlos Pimenta also talks about waste, the destruction of ecosystems and nature in general.
The planet has gone through five situations like this, rebalanced itself, life on Earth has been on the brink of extinction five times, he recalls, causing “this has happened so many times and is so studied that there are no excuses for ignorance.”
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Instead of learning from history what has humanity done? Carlos Pimenta responds that in just over 100 years he burned the carbon that was fixed in the last 100 million years, and now sees Siberia at 35 degrees, Greenland at 23, referring that “the amount of ice that came out in a single day from Greenland could cover Florida (United States) entirely with three degrees of water”, a hurricane and torrential rains in Sicily (Italy), floods in Germany, Luxembourg or Belgium.
“The transitional regime is approaching and there is a moment when it is no longer possible to return to the previous period. There is a moment when the balance changes, it is unpredictable”, warns Carlos Pimenta.
“We are going to have very strong winds, which can be punctual, to have phenomena of extreme capacity, also advanced, it is the adaptation of the natural system. But there will come a time when the imbalance is not manifested by invited phenomena. ”
It will then be the height, he predicts, of science-fiction storms, desertification, the large-scale death of the oceans.
“Science does not know when these global disruptions appear, the punctual ones that have already been defined. If the Gulf Stream (of Mexico) recedes, I could have 800 years of ice in Europe”, says the expert, returning to the example of the bridge to conclude that “the data cannot say when the bridge falls, and when it does. life adapts. But not Man, at least not this Man”.
For all these reasons, says Carlos Pimenta, COP26 is a “desperate attempt by scientists”, because they have never been so clear about the consequences of human action on the climate as they are now, even though they do not know when a new balance begins, or that catastrophic phenomena it entails, nor how long will they last.
But the underlying problem is how to change the model and lifestyle. A style that, in the words of the former secretary of state, allows eight to 10 billion pieces each year to go to landfill without even being used. That allows frightening amounts of methane to be produced in farms to feed meat consumption.
“Someday it’s going to be necessary to tell people not to dramatically cut meat there is no planet. And who is going to say this? This is not even anything new, as the European Parliament warned in the 1990s ”, he says.
For now, he adds, as economies continue without the assumption that resources can be used unlimitedly, that the atmosphere has unlimited capacity and so do the oceans, but “these assumptions are false”, says Carlos Pimenta, considering that even so, at COP26, countries will try to keep everything the same, ignoring that it is not possible to continue to consume fossil fossils as they have been, to waste a third of incorporated food, to build houses that are energy sinks, to drive cars as they are today see yourself.
Carlos Pimenta pauses, talks about cars again, and as if just thinking aloud he says that in a normal car the efficiency is no more than 15%.
“In the 20 liters of gasoline I buy I use four, the others are heat from the engine and smoke from the exhaust pipe. I have equipment that weighs a ton and a half and spends what it takes to transport 70 kilos of people. How does the planet hold up? ”, Question.
For all this, defends Carlos Pimenta, it is necessary that governments, which have the information, act, and that people demand that, at least in democratic countries, decisions are taken, because this is the obligation of any government.
And not just in the fight against climate change. It is necessary to act in adapting to the new times. Carlos Pimenta even cites examples of what is being done in several European countries, of large investments in adaptation. “Not in Portugal, which in Portugal ‘is more Fátima’”, he says, mocking with what seems to be the wait for a miracle.