This Wednesday, Maxime Binet and his columnists focused on three main topics. First of all, they drew an initial assessment of Toussaint’s two-week holiday. They then spoke of the mild temperatures of this fall, with a somewhat upset climate. Finally, they talked regarding real estate, with this rush of young people… to the villages.
On the set, several guests and columnists have succeeded. Celine Aronentrepreneur and CEO of So Blond Management, a DJ booking agency, and Nawal Bensalem, deputy editor-in-chief at the DH, were featured as columnists. While Christophe CuckoldGeneral Manager of the Family League, Jean-Pascal van Yperseleprofessor of climatology at UCL and Renaud Gregoirenotary, were guests of Maxime Binet.
Regarding the current temperatures, which are breaking all records for the month of October, can we definitely link them to global warming? “If it was an isolated event, that would obviously not be enough. But when we see the repetition of records for high temperature, violent rain, drought etc., this set of factors confirms that the climate is indeed out of order”, assures Jean-Pascal van Ypersele. And when Maxime Binet pointed out to him that these generous temperatures for the season allow a gain in the wallets of many families, given the current energy costs, the professor at UCLouvain retorts: “It is certainly the right calculation at the moment at the portfolio level, we will save some heating, but when we take stock of all the effects of climate change, whether it is the terrible damage from the floods of the last year or the many deaths due to the heat wave of the summer of 2020, we realize that the balance sheet is generally negative.
As COP27 will soon open in Egypt, what will Belgium look like if we fail to respect this desire not to exceed 2°C of global warming by 2100? Jean-Pascal van Ypersele delivers his expert opinion: “It will be a slightly less habitable Belgium. Our country is not one of the most threatened by climate change, but unfortunately we have already seen the serious human consequences of heat waves. They are not always very visible, but in the death figures, we see it. We saw it besides for the summer of 2020, it is 1,400 additional deaths because of the heat waves. We also saw last year the 41 deaths and enormous damage caused by the very violent rains and the floods that followed. Unfortunately, these are the kinds of things that will repeat themselves in the decades to come. We must not only prepare for them, but we must also reduce gas emissions to greenhouse effect to prevent the situation from becoming too serious.”
The intervention of Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (following 17 minutes on the video) and the entire program can be discovered above.