hoyer9_Marcos del MazoLightRocket via Getty Images_climatechangeprotest

Restabelecer a confiança dos cidadãos em matéria de alterações climáticas

Oct 27, 2021 Werner Hoyer

LUXEMBURGO – O mundo tem de mudar a forma como enfrenta a crise climática. A estratégia atual é muito lenta e corre o risco de ficar aquém das nossas próprias metas para limitar o aquecimento global e mitigar o seu impacte. E, como já não estão satisfeitas com as declarações políticas, as pessoas exigem ação.

Este mal-estar popular é corroborado pelo inquérito sobre o clima anual do Banco Europeu de Investimento. Cerca de 75% dos cidadãos da União Europeia, 69% dos britânicos e 59% dos americanos dizem que estão mais preocupados com a emergência climática do que os respetivos governos. E quase metade dos inquiridos afirma que a dificuldade em resolver a crise climática se deve principalmente à inatividade do governo.

[Gráfico 1]

To continue reading, register now.

As a registered user, you can enjoy more PS content every month – for free.

Subscribe now for unlimited access to everything PS has to offer.

Already have an account? Log in

Subscribe to Project Syndicate

Enjoy unlimited access to the ideas and opinions of the world's leading thinkers, including weekly long reads, book reviews, topical collections, and interviews; The Year Ahead annual print magazine; the complete PS archive; and more. All for less than $9 a month.

Subscribe Now

The Promise of Green Hydrogen PS OnPoint
Getty Images
Subscriber Exclusive

The Promise of Green Hydrogen

Thomas Koch Blank offers an overview of the technology's potential applications and remaining development challenges.

0
A Global Green Deal Sustainability Now
Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images

A Global Green Deal

Ursula von der Leyen & Werner Hoyer offer a blueprint for how the European Union can help the rest of the world achieve carbon neutrality.

12

new comment has been posted. new comments have been posted.

0 Comments on this paragraph, 3 Comments on this article

Mark Ruscoe Oct 31, 2021

The title of the commentary is, "Restoring Citizens' Trust on Climate Change". It opens with an admonition that elected officials must respond better to public opinion.

Public opinion is a poor substitute for science. Public opinion is easily manipulatable into Group Think. Thus, even those who can't quite put their finger on how they've been misled lose faith in public officials. Much less those of us who understand the science, which does not call for alarmism.

The only sound way to "restore trust" is to follow the science...not the New York Times editorial page.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Kurt Kristensen Oct 29, 2021

After living and working in Greenland, Alaska, New Zealand, Oregon and Tennessee, I have seen glaciers disappear and Arctic temperatures increase during January from -25 degrees F to +25 degrees F. Climate is indeed changing rapidly, and it may be almost completely due to the rapid global population increase from 3-4 billion to 7-9 billion, with attendant consumption habits, during the last 50 years.

In the mix of all the technological proposals from the last 20 years no one appear willing to engage global level politicians and decision makers in the very real possibility that, with a projected growth of the global population to over 12 billion by 2050/2100 no combination of technological intervention will be sufficient to even hold the impacts of growing consumption patterns attributed to the increase of 3-5 billion - most living in urban centers.

Already the migratory mass of humanity fleeing climate, economic or military disruption is massing close to one (1) billion people at the borders of the West.

Interventions might need to be energized at more basic levels; for example, micro-lending organizations such as kiva dot org allows ordinary people in the West to create perpetual loan balances available to people in under-developed countries who have the energy and vision to make entrepreneurial changes and investments 'at home.'

Relying on giant wind farms, nano-food factories, GM food and super-dense urban centers to solve the climate challenges may carry more unintended consequences than 'planners' have anticipated.

Common sense solutions would seem to suggest, for example, that smaller family farms growing healthy organic food products, and providing a living of more non-urban families, may produce a better net-sum benefit than relying on larger and larger feed lots, and endless mega-farms relying on mono-crops.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Emanuel Müller Oct 27, 2021

That's the key, technological advances that will allow to reabsorb CO2 and turn it into gold bars will allow to fight both neutralize both climate change, inequality of income, net worth and opportunity.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.