Emissions Rising Again After a Year of Lockdowns

FRANS TIMMERMANS, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, EUROPEAN GREEN DEAL: The urgency is, if you see what’s happening already now, with the Earth’s temperature just rising one degree, if you see all the droughts we’re seeing, the locust infestations in East Africa, the wildfires across the Earth, and if you don’t understand that we will be 10 billion a generation from now, how are you going to feed all the people, if you know you don’t have any harvests anymore? How are you going to provide water where there’s no longer any water? So, this is not just about reducing emissions. This is about saving humanity. And we have to act now, because the temperature keeps rising. Look what’s happening in the Arctic. Look what’s going to happen in the Antarctic. We really need to act now. And I can’t stress this enough. Of course, you have to keep people in their comfort zone. That’s what politics always dictates. But I can’t — I don’t have that luxury. I have to tell it to people, people, this is really urgent. We need to act now. We have an opportunity to act. We can come out of this stronger and better, but not if we waste the next couple of years.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: And you talk about temperatures rising. The Paris agreement capped global warming to two degrees. And now there are scientists that are saying that’s going to be more to four degrees, just giving a sense of the urgency right now. As we mentioned, you had met with U.S. envoy John Kerry yesterday. What did the two of you discuss?

TIMMERMANS: Well, what we want to try and do, separately and together, is to get the world together in Glasgow in November, and to make sure that all the major emitters, including China, including India, commit to an ambitious program. We need this ambition urgently to bring this to the table, to make sure they’re part of the deal. We also need to make sure that those countries most affected already by climate change that don’t have the means to that, that don’t have the means to mitigate the consequences are supported by the richest countries on Earth in making the right changes. And we also need to make sure that we have a plan where everybody can follow, where everybody can contribute in the best possible way. And for this, working together between the E.U. and the U.S. is a good place to start. We’re on the same page. On most issues, we have exactly the same position. It’s good to have the U.S. back. We desperately needed them in this fight. And I think, together, we can achieve a lot.