At the start of ‘One Planet Summit’ today, Paris Agreement still heading for 3 degrees warming

Two years after the Paris Agreement, and with the impacts of climate change devastating lives, the world’s countries’ inadequate pledges mean we are on track to deliver a catastrophic 3 degrees of warming, or more.

The Paris Agreement was meant to shift finance away from climate changing projects and dirty fossil fuels and towards safer development, but G20 governments and banks are still funding fossil fuel projects on a massive scale. As world leaders meet at President Macron’s One Planet summit in Paris today, Friends of the Earth joins over 100 organisations [1] calling on governments to end subsidies and public finance for fossil fuels.

Rachel Kennerley, international climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said:

“Two years out from the Paris Agreement, President Macron’s summit should resolutely move cold, hard cash away from dirty, polluting energy, and instead invest in clean energy if we are to avoid the earth’s global temperature rising by 3 degrees.

“The summit will fail if it just delivers a rehash of previous commitments because the scale of the challenge faced clearly cries out for a radical and immediate response.”

To keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees, countries will need to ramp up climate action, peaking emissions by 2020, followed by continued rapid cuts. In the UK this means we need to stop exploration for any new fossil fuels, including fracking.

Additionally, the UK needs to provide new and additional finance to support people suffering from the impacts of climate change we can’t stop or adapt to. This is known as ‘loss and damage’.

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1. http://priceofoil.org/2017/12/11/one-planet-sign-on-letter-stop-funding-fossils/