In TheAPInterview, New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister James Shaw says the pandemic has shown that humans are very good at responding to an immediate crisis. But with a slower-moving threat like climate change, he says, we’re “terribly bad.”
Shaw said the pandemic had accelerated the transition to cleaner energy in some countries. But in many developing nations it had slowed improvements, he said, because they were struggling simply to cope with the massive financial and social impacts from the disease.
New Zealand’s government has promised the country will become carbon-neutral by 2050. But it has also faced criticism for talking a lot about climate change and not taking action quickly enough. Greenhouse gas emissions in the nation of 5 million reached an all-time high just before the pandemic hit.
Climate scientist James Renwick said he thinks New Zealand and other nations need to bring more urgency to their actions.“The countries of the world have talked about this issue for many years, but we still haven’t really seen the action, and time has got extremely short now,” said Renwick, a professor at the Victoria University of Wellington. “We’ve got to see emissions reduction starting immediately, 2022, and we have to get emissions down really fast in the next decade.
He said an important part of his trip to Glasgow will be to stand alongside colleagues from low-lying Pacific islands who are already feeling extensive effects from climate change through more severe cyclones and rising sea levels.
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