Jonas Goldman, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Western democracies need to create a financing program to support the energy transition in the Indo-Pacific — and to achieve both regional security and climate goals.
The world promised progress at the Glasgow climate conference. Now it has to turn those promises into reality. A former senior UN official describes what to watch for in the coming year.
Details of the US$8.5billion funding South Africa is set to receive to support the move to a just transition and a climate resilient economy haven’t been made public yet. Here’s what’s clear so far.
Reducing methane emissions could slow global warming quickly and buy time for the world to wean itself off fossil fuels. But it must not distract from the challenge to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
Timothy Welch, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Electric cars are hailed as the best way to cut transport emissions, but it’s an illusion to think we can reduce our environmental impact without changing the way we design and move about in cities.
Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
Electric cars are expensive in Australia partly because European emission standards reward manufacturers for selling them there. There’s an obvious fix.
More than 100 world leaders have pledged to end the destruction of forests by 2030 as a way to slow climate change. That will require changing how the world produces four widely used commodities.