Amsterdam, November 21, 2012 – In response to the release of the UNEP’s third Emissions Gap Report, Kaisa Kosonen, Climate Policy Adviser at Greenpeace International, made the following statement:“In recent weeks we have seen warnings from the World Bank that our current course could lead to a 4 degrees Celsius temperature increase and from the CIA that climate change could lead to geopolitical destabilisation. Global investors are calling for ramped up climate talks as extreme weather increases investment risk. This is no abstract threat: this comes at the end of a year that has seen the impacts of climate change devastate homes and families around the world, most recently Hurricane Sandy.
“Meanwhile the UNEP warns that the gulf between where global emissions are heading to compared to where they need to be if we’re to keep to a temperature increase of below 2 degrees is huge and growing. How many warnings both verbal and physical do we need before sanity prevails?
“But the most important message that the UNEP report delivers is that we can still keep warming below dangerous levels. At the climate talks in Doha, governments can and must maintain a robust international process free from loopholes. Beyond Doha, governments and business must focus on redirecting investments from fossil fuels to renewable energy and efficiency.
“In the past five years, growth in coal use has caused over two-thirds of the increase in global CO2 emissions. To prevent climate chaos, devastating health effects and water scarcity, the vast majority of the proposed 1,200 coal-fired power plants around the world cannot go ahead. Clean and safe renewable energy is already pushing coal out of the electricity market, and this is the clean energy revolution that governments must speed up.”