BY SINTAYEHU TAMIRAT
At the fourth day of COP28-UN Climate Conference in Dubai, UN Secretary-General António Guterres delivers a strong message to stakes he dubbed "climate crisis giants"-the oil and gas industries.
“Methane pledges by the ‘giants behind the climate crisis’ fall short fall well short of what’s needed to meaningfully tackle the climate crisis.,” said the UN Chief on Sunday.
Guterres stated that giants behind the climate crisis are finally starting to wake up, “but the promises made clearly fall short of what is required.”
On Saturday, president of this year’s UN climate talks announced about fifty oil companies--close to half of global production-- have pledged to reach near-zero methane emissions and end routine flaring in their operations by 2030, the pledge, however, received critics from environmental groups who called it “smokescreen.”
Adding to the environmentalists critics to the pledge, Guterres said it is a “step in the right direction”, but the promise failed to address a core issue, namely, eliminating emissions from fossil fuel consumption.
Methane (CH4) is a primary component of natural gas and is responsible for about a third of the planetary warming we see today. It is short-lived but is more powerful than carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most responsible for climate change. Without serious action, global anthropogenic methane emissions are projected to rise by up to 13 per cent between now and 2030.
The UN Chief also pointed out that the pledge did not provide clarity on the pathway to reaching net-zero by 2050, which is “absolutely essential to ensure integrity,” and brought a key event from the 2015 Paris Agreement: “Science is clear: we need to phase out fossil fuels within a timeframe compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 Celsius.”
In a world on a fast-track to temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius, climate vulnerability is bound to escalate, hence, it is critical to cut carbon pollution at an accelerated pace and invest in protecting vulnerable communities from the impact of more frequent and severe climate-related events, he suggested.
He further suggested a windfall tax on fossil fuel profits and for the money to be used to protect those suffering the worst impacts.
And countries need to be encouraged to be “bold and ambitious and to double the speed and scale of support in 2024,” he said.