Climate, premier Barbados: “Two degrees more death sentence for us”

An average global temperature rise of “1.5 degrees” from pre-industrial levels “is what we need to survive. Two degrees is a death sentence for the people of Barbuda, Antigua, Maldives, Dominica, Kenya and Mozambique, and for the people of Samoa and Barbados “. Thus the premier of Barbados, Mia Mottley, during Cop26 in Glasgow. Read also “The pandemic” of Covid-19, continues Mottley, “has taught us that national solutions do not work for national problems. There are gaps: on climate finance for mitigation, on NDCs (National Determined Contributions, the commitments that every country takes to reduce emissions, ed.) What should we say to our peoples who are on the front line, when there is no ambition here and, unfortunately, not even some of the faces that are necessary? Our peoples are watching us: Do we really have to leave Scotland without the results they need? Do some leaders present believe they can survive on their own? Have they learned nothing from the pandemic? “” The leaders – continues Mottley – must not disappoint those who elected them to lead. We must cut the Gordian knot: the central banks of the richest countries have spent 25 billion dollars on quantitative easing in the last 13 years. If we had used them to finance the energy transition, for example r change the way we eat and move, we would have already reached the limit of 1.5 degrees which is vital for us. We need an annual increase in special drawing rights (the IMF’s account currency, ed) of 500 billion dollars a year for 20 years, placed in a trust, to finance the transition: this is the real gap that needs to be bridged , not the 50 billion proposed for climate adaptation. And if 500 billion seems like a lot to you, guess what, it’s only 2% of what was spent on Qe “, he concludes.