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Among a flurry of posts on social media last weekend, US president Donald Trump declared “good riddance” to a specific emissions scenario used in global climate projections.

The “RCP8.5” scenario, which envisages a future of very high carbon emissions, was “wrong, wrong, wrong”, the president wrote in block capitals.

This was “just admitted” by the UN’s “top climate committee”, he falsely claimed, referring to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The post was quickly picked up by right-leaning media, amplifying Trump’s misrepresentation of emissions scenarios and the role of the IPCC.

His claim follows the publication of a new set of emissions scenarios that will feed into the next IPCC reports.

While the new scenarios no longer include such high emissions as in RCP8.5, they also show it is “not possible” to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels without significant “overshoot”, one of the authors tells Carbon Brief.

Moreover, projections suggest that the world is still on course for between 2.5C and 3C of warming, another author says.

This level of warming was previously described as “catastrophic” by the UN.

In this factcheck, Carbon Brief looks at Trump’s comments, the debate around RCP8.5 and the “good” and “bad” news within the latest scenarios.

What did Trump say?

In the late evening of Saturday 16 May, Trump posted the following message on his Truth Social social-media platform:

“Dumocrats” is a derogatory nickname for Democrat politicians, debuted by the president in a televised Fox News interview on Thursday 14 May, according to the Independent.

By “top climate committee”, the president was presumably referring to the IPCC, the UN body responsible for assessing science about human-caused climate change.

However, the IPCC does not develop, control or own climate scenarios. Moreover, it has not published anything stating that any climate scenario is “wrong”. (For more, see: How is the IPCC involved?)

Nevertheless, right-leaning media outlets have reported on Trump’s comments, in many instances repeating his false assertion that the RCP8.5 climate scenario had been developed by the IPCC.

The New York Post misleadingly claimed that the IPCC “had quietly adjusted” its framework of emission scenarios. The Daily Caller, a pro-Trump conspiratorial US outlet, adds its own falsehoods stating that “IPCC researchers revised their modelling approach last month, swapping the extreme pathway for seven alternative scenarios”. The climate-sceptic Australian claimed that scientists had “quietly scrapped the apocalyptic forecasts that have terrified policymakers and the public”.

With Fox News also covering Trump’s comments, along with an earlier article by the Times, much of the reporting around RCP8.5 in recent days has been driven by media controlled by the climate-sceptic mogul Rupert Murdoch.

It is not the first time the Trump administration has attacked RCP8.5. In an executive order issued in May 2025 – entitled, “Restoring gold-standard science” – the White House included the climate scenario in a list of examples of how the previous government had “used or promoted scientific information in a highly misleading manner”.

Excerpt from White House executive order, saying: "Similarly, agencies have used Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenario 8.5 to assess the potential effects of climate change in a “higher” warming scenario. RCP 8.5 is a worst-case scenario based on highly unlikely assumptions like end-of-century coal use exceeding estimates of recoverable coal reserves. Scientists have warned that presenting RCP 8.5 as a likely outcome is misleading."
Excerpt from White House executive order, issued in May 2025.

Federal agencies, it claimed, had been using RCP8.5 to “assess the potential effects of climate change in a higher warming scenario”, despite scientists warning that “presenting RCP8.5 as a likely outcome is misleading”.

The executive order came after Project 2025 – a policy wishlist for Trump’s second term published in 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, an influential rightwing, climate-sceptic thinktank in the US – criticised the climate scenario.

The manifesto said a “day-one” priority for the new government should be to “eliminate” the US Environmental Protection Agency’s “use of unauthorised regulatory inputs”, such as “unrealistic climate scenarios, including those based on RCP8.5”.

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What is RCP8.5?

Scientists use emissions scenarios to explore potential future climates, based on how global energy and land use could change in the decades to come.

These scenarios are not predictions or forecasts of what will happen in the future. Therefore, Trump’s declaration that projections under RCP8.5 were “wrong, wrong, wrong” misrepresents the purpose of emissions scenarios.

Different modelling groups have produced thousands of different scenarios over the years. RCP8.5 was developed by scientists back in the early 2010s as one of a set of four consistent “representative concentration pathways”, or RCPs, for climate modellers to use.

As their name suggests, the RCPs were representative of the vast array of scenarios in the scientific literature.

Their corresponding numbers – 2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 – do not describe temperature rise (as some mistakenly assume), but the level of “radiative forcing” that each pathway reaches by 2100. This forcing level is a measure of the change in the Earth’s “energy balance” (in watts per square metre) caused by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

As the highest forcing of the set, RCP8.5 was a scenario of very high emissions and extensive global warming.

When it was originally published in 2011, RCP8.5 was intended to reflect the high end – roughly the 90th percentile – of the baseline scenarios available in the scientific literature at the time.

A “baseline” scenario is one that assumes no climate mitigation, explains Dr Chris Smith, senior research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. He tells Carbon Brief:

“RCP8.5 was developed as a no-climate-policy scenario, often called ‘reference’ or ‘baseline’ scenarios. These are used to benchmark the actions of climate policy.”

Under RCP8.5, the IPCC’s fifth assessment report (AR5) in 2013 projected a best estimate of 4.3C of temperature rise by 2081-2100, compared to the pre-industrial period, with a “likely” range of 3.2C to 5.4C.

The RCPs were succeeded in 2017 by the “shared socioeconomic pathways”, or SSPs. The SSPs included a set of five socioeconomic “narratives”, which described factors such as population change, economic growth and the rate of technological development.

The SSPs were then used in the IPCC’s sixth assessment (AR6) cycle, which ran over 2015-23. The upper end of the AR6 temperature projections was provided by the successor to RCP8.5, known as SSP5-8.5, which indicated warming of 4.4C by 2081-2100, with a “very likely” range of 3.3C to 5.7C.

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Why is RCP8.5 so hotly debated?

Prof Detlef van Vuuren from Utrecht University, a leading figure in the development of emissions scenarios for many years, tells Carbon Brief that RCP8.5 is a “low-probability, high-risk scenario and it was always meant like that”.

The scenario assumed a world without climate policy and was designed to explore the consequences of high levels of greenhouse gases and global warming. It was not, van Vueren says, a “best-guess scenario” of what the future held in store.

However, in some research papers, RCP8.5 was characterised as “business as usual”, suggesting that it was the likely outcome if society did not pursue climate action.

This was “incorrect”, says van Vuuren, noting that RCP8.5 “is not a likely outcome”. He adds: “It’s never been a likely outcome.”

Over time, RCP8.5 became hotly debated in academic circles, with some scientists arguing that such high emissions were becoming increasingly unlikely and others claiming that RCP8.5 was still consistent with historical cumulative carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Carbon Brief unpacked the arguments in this debate in a detailed explainer in 2019.

The charts below, originally included in a 2012 Nature commentary and then updated each year by the authors, shows how projected CO2 emissions under RCP8.5 (red line) compares with the other RCPs (bold coloured lines) and observations (black line).

The left-hand chart shows total CO2 emissions, including land-use change, while the right-hand chart shows CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels and producing cement – the dominant drivers of 21st century emissions.

Global total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use
Global total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use (left) and global fossil CO2 emissions (left) for historical observations (black lines) and the four RCP (coloured bold lines) for 1980-2050. Originally produced as part of Peters et al. (2012) and since updated by Glen Peters and Robbie Andrew.

While emission trends up to the early 2010s approximately tracked RCP8.5, a flattening of emissions growth in the years since has meant they have not kept pace with the sustained rises that were assumed in the scenario.

Over the past decade, global emissions have more closely tracked RCP4.5, one of the two “medium stabilisation scenarios” of the original four RCPs.

The debate around RCP8.5 has not just focused on current emissions, but also on the scenarios underlying assumptions for the future.

When it was published in 2011, the world had just seen unprecedented growth in global CO2 emissions, which had increased by 30% over the previous decade. Global coal use had increased by nearly 50% over the same period. Cleaner alternatives remained expensive in most countries and the idea of continued rapid growth in coal use seemed realistic.

Critics of RCP8.5 point to its assumptions for a dramatic expansion of coal use in the future, as well as high growth in global population.

For example, in a 2017 paper, two scientists argued that the “return to coal” envisaged in RCP8.5 would require an unprecedented five-fold increase in global coal use by the end of the century. Such an outcome was “exceptionally unlikely”, the authors wrote.

However, others have argued that while high-emissions scenarios are becoming increasingly unlikely, they still have an important role to play. For example, they highlight risks that only emerge under higher levels of warming.

In addition, research has shown that feedbacks in the climate system – where warming triggers the release of more CO2 and methane, which warms the planet further – could mean that human-caused emissions lead to a higher radiative forcing and have a greater climate impact than initially assumed.

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How has RCP8.5 been replaced?

As the IPCC heads into its seventh assessment cycle (AR7), scientists have been developing the emissions scenarios and climate model projections that will – eventually – feed into its reports.

For the emissions scenarios, that process – known as ScenarioMIP – started back in 2023 at a meeting in Reading, UK. This involved scientists representing “different climate research communities”, explains van Vuuren.

This “brainstorming” session devised the outlines for the new scenarios, he says. After more meetings, these were subsequently developed into a proposal that was – after review – translated into a journal paper. After review from scientists and the public, the final paper was published in April.

The paper sets out seven all-new emissions scenarios, replacing the SSPs (and its predecessors, the RCPs). For simplicity, the new scenarios are named according to their levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

The figures below show the emissions (left) and the estimated global temperature changes (right) under the proposed scenarios, from the “low-to-negative” emissions scenario (turquoise) up to a “high-emissions” scenario (brown).

The greenhouse gas emissions for each of the CMIP7 climate scenarios (left) and the associated estimated average temperature change over 2000-2150 from a 1850-1900 baseline (right) using the FaIR emulator. Source: Adapted from Van Vuuren et al. (2026)
The greenhouse gas emissions for each of the CMIP7 climate scenarios (left) and the associated estimated average temperature change over 2000-2150 from a 1850-1900 baseline (right) using the FaIR emulator. Source: Adapted from Van Vuuren et al. (2026)

(It should be noted that, while the ScenarioMIP paper has been published, there remains an embargo on using the scenario data produced by integrated assessment models – often referred to as IAMs – to publish academic papers, analysis or even social media posts until 1 September this year. Carbon Brief will publish a detailed explainer on the new scenarios once the embargo lifts.)

When compared to the SSPs that came before, the range in future emissions in the new scenarios “will be smaller”, the authors say in the paper:

“On the high-end of the range, the…high emission levels (quantified by SSP5-8.5) have become implausible, based on trends in the costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy and recent emission trends…At the low end, many…emission trajectories have become inconsistent with observed trends during the 2020-30 period.”

In other words, the combination of technological progress and action on climate change that, to date, remains insufficient, means that scenarios of very high or very low emissions are now not considered plausible.

Another way of looking at it is that the “range of potential futures has narrowed”, explains Smith, one of the authors on the paper.

If you “draw a fan or plume of potential future emissions that start in 2025”, it lies entirely within the spread of scenarios from a decade ago, he says:

“So you’ve ruled out futures at the high end. You’ve also ruled out futures at the low end – so it’s now not possible to limit warming to 1.5C, at least in the short term or the medium term.

This is a mix of “good” and “bad” news, Smith adds.

“In the latest set of scenarios, the lowest [scenario sees] peaking at about 1.7C, so we’ve also lost that low end, but the good news is we’ve lost the high end…Back in 2010, RCP8.5 wasn’t an implausible future, we’ve now made it an implausible future, because we’ve actually bent the curve [on emissions] enough to eliminate that possibility.”

The new “high” scenario projects warming in 2100 of closer to 3.2C (with a range of 2.5C to 4.3C).

To be clear, this “high” scenario would still come with catastrophic climate impacts, even if the level of warming would remain slightly below what was set out in RCP8.5.

Van Vuuren adds that the world is “now on a trajectory to 2.5-3C of warming”. As a result, “we don’t have any scenario anymore that can reach 1.5C with limited overshoot – we will have a significant overshoot”.

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How is the IPCC involved?

Contrary to Trump’s claims, the common set of future emissions scenarios used by climate scientists are not developed by the IPCC, the UN climate-science body that produces landmark reports about climate change.

Instead, the development process described above is driven by a group of Earth system modelling experts convened by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP).

CMIP – an initiative of another UN body, the World Climate Research Programme – coordinates the work of dozens of climate modelling centres around the world.

Working in six-to-eight year cycles, CMIP asks modelling centres around the world to run a common set of climate-model experiments – simulations that use the same inputs and conditions – that allows for results to be collected together and more easily compared.

For experiments that explore how the climate might change in the future, modelling centres are instructed to run simulations against a fixed set of future climate scenarios, each with different levels of concentrations of greenhouse gases, aerosols and other drivers of climate change.

These future emissions scenarios are revisited each time CMIP embarks on a new “phase” of climate-modelling coordination, to reflect advances in scientific understanding and the pace of real-world climate action.

The group tasked with producing the design of future scenarios, as well as the “input files” for climate models, is the “scenario model intercomparison project”, or ScenarioMIP.

CMIP aligns its work with the schedule of the IPCC, coordinating a new set of model runs for each IPCC assessment cycle.

For example, the IPCC’s AR5 in 2013 featured climate models from the fifth phase of CMIP (CMIP5), whereas AR6 in 2021 used climate models from CMIP’s sixth phase (CMIP6).

AR7 will feature models from CMIP’s ongoing seventh phase (CMIP7). The first results from CMIP7 model runs are expected later this year.

The IPCC is consulted during the CMIP process, van Vuuren tells Carbon Brief, but their input is “no different from any other review comment” that the ScenarioMIP team received.

Thus, while the IPCC relies on model runs coordinated by CMIP in its landmark reports, it does not play a role in designing future emissions scenarios, nor in deciding when they should be retired.

Dr Robert Vautard, co-chair of IPCC AR7 Working Group I, tells Carbon Brief that the IPCC does not “do or coordinate research”. Its role, he says, is to “synthesise existing knowledge” and produce “regular” reviews of climate-science literature.

He adds that ScenarioMIP is just one set of scenarios the climate-science body assesses in its reports:

“IPCC assesses all scenarios, or sets of scenarios, that the scientific community produces. IPCC does not produce scenarios. CMIP7 will be [one] set of scenarios assessed by IPCC [for AR7] – but there will be many others.”

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The post Factcheck: Trump’s false claims about the IPCC and ‘RCP8.5’ climate scenario appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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‘Incoming COP Presidency must shape the vision’: Greenpeace response to Minister Bowen’s opening address at Bonn climate talks

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Bonn, Germany, Tuesday 9 June 2026 — In response to Minister Chris Bowen’s opening address at the Bonn Climate Change Conference SB64, Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific and speaking from Bonn, said:

“While Australia’s speech was strongly focused on the limitations of fossil fuels and supply chains amid the current energy shock, what’s still lacking is the vision and agenda for COP31 that will truly deliver the transition away from fossil fuels. Until then, it remains rhetoric without any results. Minister Bowen emphasised the electrification agenda and renewable energies, but in a challenging geopolitical environment more clearly needs to be done to ensure COP31 is a moment of true implementation.

“Every successful COP has depended on a strong Presidency and Bonn is a key moment for the incoming Presidency to start shaping the vision. What Australia must also do is support Pacific climate leadership and get squarely behind the longstanding Pacific priorities of limiting warming to 1.5°C — and that requires rapidly phasing out fossil fuels, building resilience to the escalating impacts of climate change, addressing loss and damage, and ensuring communities can access the funding and support they need.”

Ahead of SB64, Greenpeace International has produced a policy briefing outlining the core elements of a just transition away from fossil fuels and the urgent, priority actions needed from national governments and through global co-operation to make it a reality.[1]

ENDS

[1] A Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels: Policy Briefing

Photos in the Greenpeace Media Library

Media contact

Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 (Whatsapp/Signal) or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org

‘Incoming COP Presidency must shape the vision’: Greenpeace response to Minister Bowen’s opening address at Bonn climate talks

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Bonn Bulletin: Tackling climate crisis is “hardest” challenge ever, Stiell says

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Kicking off proceedings at the mid-year climate talks in Bonn amid fraught global geopolitics, UN climate chief Simon Stiell told delegates that tackling the global climate crisis is “the hardest, but most important, thing humanity has ever tried to do together”.

Perhaps hoping to forestall the usual diplomatic wrangling that routinely bogs down the talks, he warned governments that there is no time to “re-open past debates or renegotiate commitments already made”.

Instead, he added, there is an imperative to accelerate real-world action as deadly heat intensifies and the fossil-fuel cost crisis sparked by the Iran war strangles economies, “taking a wrecking ball to lives and prosperity”. 

That message seemed to sink in with the negotiators in Bonn, where the opening session kicked off only an hour late and was not marred by agenda rows, which delayed the start of the talks by a day last year.

On bridging the gap between the negotiations and the real economy, Stiell called for elevating the Global Climate Action Agenda, a goal long promised but never fully delivered.

But, he added, Türkiye – working with Australia – is now building on the efforts by last year’s COP30 presidency to streamline this process into six thematic areas, including boosting energy and food security, curbing methane and strengthening the resilience of cities.

What to expect from the Bonn climate talks

Stiell was also keen to stress that the formal negotiations remain central to driving implementation of the Paris Agreement. He urged governments in Bonn to advance key issues including the Global Goal on Adaptation, the delivery of the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake and the development of a new just transition mechanism.

The first Global Stocktake was an assessment of countries’ collective progress in meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, which led to a 2023 agreement to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems and a 2030 goal to triple renewable energy, among other things.

Hinting at upcoming reforms to the UN climate regime – which has often been accused of failing to keep pace with advancements in the real world – Stiell said all institutions must continuously evolve and improve. The UN climate secretariat has heard countries’ calls to work more efficiently, support access to climate finance and reduce the reporting burden on governments, he added.

Türkiye to outline targets for Action Agenda

While Australia will run the negotiations at COP31, for co-host Türkiye – which is organising the talks in Antalya – the focus is on the so-called Global Climate Action Agenda. This is a sprawling smorgasbord of around 500 voluntary initiatives bringing together governments, businesses, investors, cities and civil society. It covers everything from strengthening power grids for clean energy, to restoring degraded forests and land, and reducing emissions from buildings.

COP31 President-Designate Murat Kurum told the opening session of the Bonn talks his team will present the “main framework” of the Action Agenda on Tuesday, adding it will be “based on concrete and tangible targets”. He also said Türkiye will announce a roadmap for translating what happens in the negotiations into the real world, which will ”point to a science-based process with highly clear and defined outcomes” and steps for getting there.

“In the second decade of the Paris Agreement, the COP31 Action Agenda will bring the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake to life, and we will make a strong start to the second decade,” Kurum said. 

In a joint letter issued in May, the two host nations said COP31 will be shaped as an “Implementation COP” and a “COP of the Future,” aimed at translating commitments into tangible and trackable progress. They outlined priority areas – to be achieved through the six axes of the Action Agenda defined ahead of COP30 – including electrification, zero waste, resilient cities, sustainable agriculture, green industrial transformation and climate finance.

Electrification emerges as COP31 priority

Chiming with this, Australia’s Chris Bowen, the COP31 president of negotiations, made the global energy transition the centerpiece of his opening intervention in Bonn.

This year’s climate summit, he said, must send investors and corporations the message that countries are “collectively committed” to building up renewable energy and reducing fossil fuel reliance. Fossil fuels were not directly mentioned in the main outcome at COP30 last year after countries failed to agree on developing a global transition roadmap, which Brazil is now putting together outside of formal negotiations.

Bowen, Australia’s minister of climate change and energy, said that, while energy crises like the one the world is going through now will become more frequent and more unpredictable, accelerating the shift to cleaner sources will “ease shocks to our energy systems”.

He identified progress on electrification as a priority for COP31, pointing to an assessment by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that electricity’s share of final energy consumption needs to reach 35% by 2035 to keep the 1.5C temperature goal in sight.

“In a world of geopolitical uncertainty and energy disruption, the transition is not a risk,” Bowen added, “it is the solution and an immense opportunity”.

The opening plenary at the June Climate Meetings in Bonn, June 8, 2026. (Photo: UN Climate Change/Lara Murillo)

The opening plenary at the June Climate Meetings in Bonn, June 8, 2026. (Photo: UN Climate Change/Lara Murillo)

Tensions around trade and climate surface again 

Over the weekend, it became clear that discussions on trade and climate would once again become a source of contention between countries – if not as explosively as they did at the start of the talks a year ago.

As agreed in the COP30 Global Mutirão decision, a series of dialogues on trade and climate will be held in Bonn yearly from 2026 to 2028. Climate Home News understands that the G77 + China has expressed discontent about the organisation of the first dialogue that will take place on June 13, because it plans to incorporate contributions from a range of organisations rather than just governments.

In a statement at the opening plenary, Uruguay, on behalf of the G77 group of developing nations, “encouraged Parties [countries] to engage constructively in the dialogue in a robust and structured manner”. Many in the Global South are concerned that international trade measures to make products greener, such as the European Union’s carbon levy on imports, could end up discriminating against them.

Russia warned during its opening statement that the new dialogue should not be used to create trade barriers.

Comment: Indonesia’s failing Just Energy Transition Partnership is a cautionary tale

Avantika Goswami, climate change and green economy programme manager at the India-based Centre for Science and Environment, told Climate Home News that the UN climate secretariat has been unclear and untransparent about what will be discussed at the dialogue. “We don’t know if observers and civil society are going to be able to contribute,” she added.

After the three mid-year dialogues, in 2028 there will be a high-level event for countries to exchange their views and experiences, and the officials in charge will have to present a report summarising these discussions.

At Monday’s opening session, Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, the Ghanian chair of the African Group of Negotiators, said it would be “important to provide clarity on how they intend to present the report” and suggested that the co-chairs of the Bonn talks should consult with countries on how best to do that. 

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Bowen urged to lead with vision and ambition to accelerate fossil fuel phase out at Bonn climate meeting, as global energy crisis bites

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Bonn, Germany, Monday 8 June 2026 — As the UN climate negotiations in Bonn commence, Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling on Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen to lead with vision and ambition to advance multilateral climate cooperation, and use his unique position to drive concrete progress at COP31 and ensure a meaningful partnership with the Pacific.

In the context of a global energy crisis and turbulent geopolitics, the Bonn Climate Change Conference will be a critical moment to sustain emerging political momentum towards a just transition away from fossil fuels. The midway point on the road to COP31 in Türkiye in November, Bonn will be the first time Minister Bowen has attended a major UN conference in his role as COP31 President of Negotiations.

The start of the Bonn meetings also marks 100 days since the illegal US-Israel war on Iran sparked a global energy shock and after 57 countries including Australia met in Santa Marta, Colombia in April for the world’s first conference on the transition away from fossil fuels — a landmark moment signalling political winds of change in the face of threats to multilateralism.

Speaking from Bonn, Dr Simon Bradshaw, COP31 Lead at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Amidst a global energy crisis, accelerating climate disasters and a looming super El Niño, the urgency to accelerate climate action and break free from fossil fuel dependence has never been clearer.

“Minister Bowen has been telling Australia and the world that we are in a global ‘fossil fuel crisis’, and that unhooking from fossil fuels is fundamental both to tackling the climate crisis and to ensuring secure and affordable energy. It’s time to match that message with a clear vision and agenda for COP31 — one that has the transition away from fossil fuels at its heart.

“As COP31 President of Negotiations, Australia has both the opportunity and responsibility to build on the momentum of COP30 in Belém and the recent landmark conference in Santa Marta on transitioning away from fossil fuels. This includes leading by example at home, with an immediate halt to new fossil fuel projects — including the mammoth proposed Browse gas project — and committing to develop a national roadmap away from fossil fuel production.”

“Few countries have as much skin the game as Australia: we are a country highly vulnerable to extreme heat, fires, floods and other impacts of climate change, we are suffering the consequences of fossil fuel dependency in terms of our energy security and affordability, but we have some of the world’s best renewable energy opportunities.

“Bonn is a key moment for the incoming Presidency to start shaping the vision, building the necessary trust, and actively setting priorities and expectations for the COP. We therefore hope and expect our Minister to be much more vocal and active in Bonn.

“Australia, in partnership with the Pacific, is taking the reins of global climate cooperation at a critical moment in the world’s transition away from fossil fuels. There is no more time to lose.”

Also in Bonn, Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Multilateral cooperation is the antidote to climate and geopolitical chaos. At Bonn, Pacific nations’ legacy of leadership from the frontlines of the climate crisis can be our guiding star as we build a more peaceful and secure world for all.

“We must build on the progress at Santa Marta and break the hold fossil fuels have on our global security and economies. Pacific nations are already facing the brunt of a global climate crisis, but now facing the compounding injustice of an energy crisis brought on by fossil fuel dependence. We did not create either of these crises, but are among the most exposed to both.

“The International Court of Justice made clear that responsibility to address the climate crisis extends beyond borders and that continuing to expand fossil fuel production, including for export, could constitute an internationally wrongful act — a ruling that has now been overwhelmingly endorsed by the UN General Assembly. Continuing down the fossil fuel path, and failing to align efforts with limiting warming to 1.5C, is a breach of our international legal obligations.

“We must not lose sight of what’s needed — by elevating the voices of Pacific leaders, backing Pacific-led solutions, and maximising the opportunity of the Pacific pre-COP, we can ensure the 1.5°C imperative and the transition away from fossil fuels are central to the agenda at COP31, and that communities are granted the finance they need to build a strong, resilient future beyond fossil fuels.”

Ahead of SB64, Greenpeace International has produced a policy briefing outlining the core elements of a just transition away from fossil fuels and the urgent, priority actions needed from national governments and through global co-operation to make it a reality.[1]

ENDS

[1] A Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels: Policy Briefing

Photos in the Greenpeace Media Library

Media contact

Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 (Whatsapp/Signal) or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org

Bowen urged to lead with vision and ambition to accelerate fossil fuel phase out at Bonn climate meeting, as global energy crisis bites

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