- Title: World can’t keep hitting snooze button on climate catastrophe - Greenpeace
- Date: 9th August 2021
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK (AUGUST 9, 2021) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) GREENPEACE UK EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JOHN SAUVEN, SAYING: "You know, it's a bit like an alarm clock. You can keep switching the alarm clock off but eventually if you don't get out of bed and get going to wherever you're meant to be going to, it will be too late. You won't get there in time. And I think that this is what this report really is saying: listen, the alarm clock has gone off many times. This is probably the last report that will be written before we go through and beyond 1.5 degree C unless we act now and that's quite a stark warning." WHITE FLASH (SOUNDBITE) (English) GREENPEACE UK EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JOHN SAUVEN, SAYING: "These reports are very weighty. Nobody is going to read them. But you can just read the headlines. You know, the wildfires out of control in Greece and Turkey, the heat domes in California and you know, British Colombia in Canada, the wildfires out of control in Siberia, the floods in Germany and in China. You just look anywhere around the world and you see climate catastrophe unfolding. All this report is doing really is putting the science behind this, saying that we are now certain that this is human-induced." WHITE FLASH (SOUNDBITE) (English) GREENPEACE UK EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JOHN SAUVEN, SAYING: "Scientists can produce reports, but scientists can't save the world. They can just tell us what is happening. This is absolutely down to governments. And there are only a few critical governments which are really important. You know, the rich countries agreed more than ten years ago to put a pot of money together to help developing countries deal with climate change. Ten years later they have still not got that money together. The trust from the developing countries and the rich world is collapsing as a result of that. If you look at China, China is responsible for more than a quarter of the world's emissions. We cannot solve this problem without China acting. They have not yet put forward a new more ambitious plan following Paris, they need to do so. They need to stop building new coal-fired power stations. They need to stop financing new coal-fired power stations abroad. As does financial centres like the city of London. There's a lot of private finance going into new fossil fuelled projects, which also needs to stop." WHITE FLASH (SOUNDBITE) (English) GREENPEACE UK EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JOHN SAUVEN, SAYING: "I think what's also important is to understand the politics of this, because when governments know the crisis that we are facing, why are they not acting? I mean, they acted with COVID and they spent 15 trillion dollars on the recovery from COVID and a lot of that 15 trillion dollars wasn't green. They could have dealt with COVID and the climate crisis together. They missed that opportunity. They can't miss that opportunity again."
- Embargoed: 23rd August 2021 10:44
- Keywords: IPCC report climate change greenpeace
- Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- City: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Environment,Europe,Temperature
- Reuters ID: LVA001EPK6S7B
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The world needs to take note of a U.N. climate science report published on Monday (August 9) and act immediately to prevent catastrophic climate change, a senior Greenpeace executive said.
Executive Director at Greenpeace UK, John Sauvin, said that governments' failure to take strong enough steps to combat climate change was akin to pressing snooze on an alarm.
Eight years after its last full update on climate science, the United Nations on Monday published a report that delivered even starker warnings about how human-induced climate change is affecting the planet - and how damaging the impacts might get.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said human influence was "unequivocally" to blame for warming the planet, and that some forms of climate disruption were now "locked in" for centuries.
Without rapid and large-scale reductions in emissions, the report said, the average global temperature will exceed critical thresholds of 1.5 and 2.0 degrees Celsius (2.7 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) during the 21st century.
(Production: Natalie Thomas, Will Russell) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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