12 December 2017 – By subsidising fossil fuels, humanity was “investing in its own doom”, UN chief Antonio Guterres said Tuesday at a Paris summit seeking to unlock funds for the global shift towards greener energy. “Fossil fuels remain heavily subsidised -– meaning we are investing in our own doom,” he told delegates at the finance-themed climate gathering called by French President Emmanuel Macron. Guterres described climate change as the “defining challenge of our times,” and warned that humanity was losing the war “for the very existence of life on our planet as we know it”. Macron called the gathering of world leaders to assess the shortfall of money needed to lift the global economy out of its reliance on atmosphere-polluting coal, oil and natural gas. The International Energy Agency estimates that investments of some $3.5 trillion (3 trillion euros) per year in the energy sector are needed until 2050 to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of limiting average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels, or double current spending. Guterres called for investment “in the future, not the past”.
Read the full article on the Agence France Presse (AFP) website.
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