Questão 15 - FCMS/JF Medicina 2024/1

At Climate Week 2023, It's Optimism Versus Cataclysm

BY JEFF YOUNG ON 9/18/23 AT 12:13 PM EDT

 

    We have just lived through Earth's hottest summer on record, with heat waves baking large parts of our planet. Scientists have also confirmed that our oceans reached the highest recorded surface temperatures this summer, bleaching corals and super-charging storms. Millions of us choked on smoke from unprecedented wildfires, and we watched, horrified, as fire ravaged a Hawaiian Eden.

    It was the sort of summer that could lead those concerned about climate change to a sense of despair. Many factors affect floods, fires and extreme weather, but the science is clear on the ways climate change contributes to them all, and this summer provided ample evidence of the risks we face.

    And yet, as climate scientists, advocates, business leaders and elected officials arrived in New York for the annual gathering called Climate Week, the overwhelming mood is one of—dare we say it—optimism.

    "We have to believe that we can overcome, right? And that optimism drives action," Angela Barranco told Newsweek. Barranco is the North America executive director for Climate Group, the international nonprofit that organizes Climate Week, which is now in its 15th year.

    In that time, Barranco said, Climate Week has grown from a small side-event coinciding with the United Nations General Assembly to a global nexus for policymakers, academics and corporate leaders attending some 400 sessions around New York City, all organized under the theme "We can. We will."

    Climate Week's growth and positive tone match changes in the economics of climate action over the past decade and a half. Sustainability is no longer just a department title within a business, it is creating entirely new businesses."It's the 'green economy' becoming the economy," Barranco said.

    That green growth was accelerated by the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden's signature legisla tive achievement on clean energy and climate, which stimulated about $110 billion in clean tech manufacturing investments in just its first year. That has spurred other countries to keep pace to remain competitive in thriving sectors.

    All of that, however, is not yet enough to meet the level of reductions in CO₂ emissions that scientists say we need to hit in order to avoid the most dangerous climate change. Many of this year's Climate Week events focus on how to scale up and accelerate the deployment of clean energy and transportation, ways to decarbonize heavy industries like cement and steel, and how to direct financing for those efforts.

    "We have the technologies, we're starting to build the political will," Barranco said. "Really, what we need to do is just move a lot faster."

newsweek.com/climate-week-2023-its-optimism-vs-cataclysm

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