The third installment of the latest IPCC climate report was unveiled on Monday. Asked regarding La Première, the climatologist Jean-Pascal van Ypersele panoints the importance of the changes in behavior that citizens can decide to adopt, especially if these changes are accompanied by policies, which must provide citizens with the means to do so. “It’s easy to say that everyone has to ride a bike, but if there’s no bike lane, it’s more difficult”. Everyone can contribute to reducing polluting emissions in many ways, he explains, for example by changing the way we eat, “by eating less meat, especially if it comes from afar and has helped deforest the Amazon, we can use public transport more, try to live in better insulated housing if we can afford it. Citizens can influence the public authorities so that they facilitate these developments: a very important power that everyone has is to vote, to challenge political actors and economic actors, and to hold them accountable. ‘challenging the world of finance: those who have savings can decide how to invest them on the right side’.
The report points to the fact “that the richest 10% of the world’s population emit almost half of the greenhouse gases. Those who pollute a lot and who have a lot of means have a greater responsibility to act, and more important means, which must probably be shared”underlines the climatologist.
“Building gas-fired power plants is money that will be invested at a loss
“We have to get out of fossil fuels as quickly as possible, and remember that the Sun, in two hours, provides us with as much energy on the surface of the Earth as Humanity consumes in a year, so the direction is clear. We must move towards a complete exit from fossil fuels”.
Belgium plans to build gas-fired power plants in order to compensate for the electricity which will not be produced when the nuclear power stations which will be closed. “Fossil infrastructure will become worthless over time, so it’s money that’s going to be invested at a loss in the medium to long term. So that’s a direction that’s a dead end, says IPCC”.
Europe spends a billion euros every day to buy energy outside its borders: “That’s 400 billion a year, 4000 billion every 10 years, what might we not build as schools, as cycle paths, as infrastructure useful to everyone, as building insulation programs with this money! The means to redirect things are there, but we need sufficient political will” he concludes.
