The
proclamation at the end of last week’s United Nations climate
change conference in Morocco was rather wordy, but the central point
was clear: “Our climate is warming at an alarming and unprecedented
rate and we have an urgent duty to respond.”
What
is not clear is where do efforts to curb global warming go from here,
now that Donald Trump has been elected leader of the free world?
Portugal’s
Prime Minister António Costa was among the delegates from
almost 200 countries who gathered in Marrakesh to push ahead with the
Paris Climate Agreement adopted at the end of last year.
The
gist of the Paris agreement is a commitment to keeping the rise in
global temperatures to below 2 ºC, and if possible 1.5ºC, above pre-industrial levels.
This envisages a carbon-neutral world sometime this century, with the
amount of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity limited to the
levels that trees, soil and oceans can absorb naturally.
The
majority of scientists have long been saying that failure to move
away from fossil fuels and restrain escalating temperatures is likely
to have “catastrophic” consequences. In Portugal, for example,
this is predicted to include rising sea levels that swamp coastal
towns and desertification that cripples the tourist industry and
agriculture.
Portugal
has ratified the agreement along with most other countries and Prime
Minister Costa has expressed solidarity with its aims and terms.
The
latest Climate Change Performance Index compiled by German Watch and
the European Climate Action Network puts Portugal in the top ten
countries in the world fighting global warming.
The
International Energy Agency, a Paris-based intergovernmental
organisation established in the framework of the OECD, states in its
2016 review that in recent years “Portugal has continued to develop
and reform its economic policy. This has meant rapid increases in
renewable energy deployment, further market liberalisation in the
electricity and natural gas sectors and greater emphasis on energy
efficiency in policy making.”
Despite
the accolades, activist groups in Portugal are continuing to press
the present government to scrap prospecting licences granted by the
previous administration and rule out any future offshore or onshore
exploration for oil or gas.
Offshore
concessions threaten normal activities along the entire coastline of
mainland Portugal, say campaigners. Exploration on land also pose
intolerable risks.
The
campaigners argue that it simply makes no sense to continue to
prospect for oil and gas if Portugal intends to meet the terms of the
Paris agreement.
Although
ratified by the majority of signatories, the Paris agreement, the
culmination of 25 years of complex negotiations, seems now in
jeopardy. Having described global warming as a hoax perpetrated by
the Chinese, President-elect Donald Trump has named a long-time
climate change sceptic and spokesperson for the fossil fuel industry,
Myron Ebella, to take over as head of the US Environmental Protection
Agency.
Trump
promised that within 100 days of taking office he would cancel the
Paris agreement and “stop all payments of US tax dollars to UN
global warming programmes.”
Then
on Tuesday this week he confounded everyone yet again. In
conversation in the offices of the New York Times he conceded “some
connectivity” between human activity and climate change.
Asked
by journalists if he still intended to pull out of the Paris
agreement, he said he had “an open mind to it.” and that he was
“looking at it very closely.”
Should
he go back to his original ‘promise’, it is hard to see how the
Paris agreement could effectively work to its given timetable.
America is second only to China among the planet’s biggest
greenhouse gas emitters.
One
positive that anti-fossil fuels campaigners take from all this is
that Trump’s approval of coal mining and oil and gas extraction is
backfiring. Increasing numbers of US citizens are reportedly joining
environmental groups and there is speculation that Trump could
inspire a whole new generation of climate activists.
The
same will surely happen in Portugal if the government does not stop
all fossil fuel prospecting in this country.