The COP-30 summit in Brazil kicked off on Tuesday with a focus on greenhouse gas emissions, forest conservation and global climate action at the forefront of this year's agenda.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the summit, urging nearly 200 participating nations to focus on climate action, quoting the UN global data, projecting only a 12 per cent reduction in global emissions by 2035 under the current policies. Last year's UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, opened with the country's president, Ilham Aliyev, calling oil—the fossil fuel that, alongside gas and coal, drives global warming—a "gift of God".
Lula, in his defiant speech, said, It is time to act against the countries that don’t want to cooperate with the world over this pressing issue. Lula said, “Forget about the future; the danger is looming large over us. We need to act and act fast, otherwise it would turn into an irreversible race for humanity.”
"We should have a fair transition," he added, referring to the drive to decarbonise economies and warning that the climate emergency is deepening inequality between "those who can live with dignity and those who should die."
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The participants from more than 190 countries are facing a race against time to reduce or limit global temperature rise by 1.5 degrees Celsius, a goal that seems quite achievable on paper but far from the real-world scenario.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell said that the world has made progress since adopting the Paris Agreement in 2015, which aims to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) — and ideally to 1.5 degrees Celsius — above pre-industrial levels. "I am not sugar-coating it," he warned. "We have so much more work to do. We must move much, much faster on both reductions of emissions and strengthening resilience."
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