Question 40796 — climate

Summary

Ms. Muriel Ressiguier alerts the Minister of Ecological Transition to the consequences of climate change. Recent years and particularly recent months have been marked by extreme and particularly numerous climatic events: fires in California, Canada, Greece, Algeria, Turkey, Russia, and even in France, heat dome in Mexico, famine in Madagascar due to drought, or even the deadly floods in Germany, Belgium, India, China and Japan. These events are a strong and now irrefutable sign of climate change that associations, NGOs, citizens and politicians have been warning about for several years. It is also a sign that the ultra-productivist model which is drying up the earth's natural resources is irreversibly disrupting the global ecological balance. Upstream of the next Glasgow International Conference on Climate Change organized by the United Nations which will take place from November 1 to 12, 2021, the IPCC, the UN intergovernmental group of experts responsible for monitoring climate change, has anticipated the release of the synthesis and the first part of its assessment report intended for political decision-makers which will be published in its entirety in February 2022 after its approval by the 195 member states of the UN. 234 scientists from 66 countries wrote 4,000 pages based on 14,000 scientific studies. 137 pages out of 4,000 warn of the imminent ecological emergency and the now inevitable effects of the consequences linked to global warming. The report sets out climate projections based on the ceiling set in 2015 by the Paris Climate Agreement. The signatory countries had undertaken not to exceed 2°C by 2050 compared to the average temperatures of the pre-industrial period 1850-1900 and for the majority of them not to exceed 1.5°C. However, in 2020, the average temperature was already 1.2°C higher than the pre-industrial period. The International Meteorological Organization even considers it very likely that the average annual global temperature will be temporarily higher than 1.5°C at the values industrial for at least one of the next 5 years. Without strong and immediate action, the countries signatories to the Paris agreement will therefore not have kept their commitments. According to the IPCC report, by limiting the increase to 2°C, warming could affect 2.5 billion human beings in the world by 2050. Even if the increase is limited to 1.5°C, IPCC experts estimate that this could lead to “gradually serious consequences, lasting centuries and sometimes irreversible” such as the melting of the ice caps of Greenland and West Antarctica which could constitute a point of no return. Indeed, alone, they contain enough water to cause a rise in sea level of 13 meters. In 2050, hundreds of millions of residents of coastal cities will be threatened by more frequent flooding waves, caused by rising sea levels. The World Bank has estimated that there will be more than 140 million climate refugees in the next thirty years. With global warming of 1.5°C, 350 million additional inhabitants will be exposed to water shortages, 400 million if the increase is 2°C. 420 million more people will be threatened by extreme heatwaves. Furthermore, the UN experts' report points to a decline from 4 to 10% of the production of the main crops for ten years. By 2050, lack of water could destroy rice growing in 40% of producing regions. As a result, at this rate, nearly 80 million additional people could suffer from hunger by 2050 with global warming of 2°C. No food reserves and no national withdrawal will protect against the effects of global warming climatic. In France, by 2100, the 150,000 hectares of the Camargue will be covered by water with salt marshes and rice fields. Other coastlines will be impacted such as the Gironde Estuary, the Marais Poitevin or even the Côte d'Opale on which sensitive sites are located: Gravelines nuclear power plant, 14 Seveso classified industrial sites or the entrance to the Channel Tunnel. To the south, Occitanie and the Mediterranean rim will be impacted, but also the interior of the land and the forests which will be affected by drought, fires, heat domes, for example in Sologne, Franche-Comté or Alsace. Whatever the pace of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the devastating impacts of warming on nature and humanity which are already perceptible will dangerously accelerate. Uncertainties remain around the “point of seesaw”, the degree of temperature from which the changes caused would be violent and irreversible and which represents a real threat. Many terrestrial, marine, coastal or freshwater ecosystems are already close to or beyond the limits allowing them to adapt. The latest IPCC report concludes with this shocking sentence, witness to the critical and imminent situation we are experiencing: “Life on Earth can be recover from major climate change by evolving new species and creating new ecosystems”, “humanity cannot”. According to the NGO Global Footprint Network, on July 29, 2021, humanity reached Overshoot Day. It has exhausted the biological resources that the planet is capable of regenerating in a year, 5 months before the end of the year. We consume approximately 74% additional resources each year compared to what ecosystems can regenerate. For several years, countries and the international community have said they are mobilizing to address environmental issues. Summits and bills follow one another but the global warming curve does not bend, on the contrary, the ecological debt continues to grow and extreme climatic events are increasing. Despite the reception, in 2015, of the Accords of Paris, France is not meeting its greenhouse gas reduction targets. Since the start of his inauguration in 2017, the president of the start-up nation has led an ecological policy of greenwashing that has been criticized by all sides. Although the bills have come one after the other: law on agriculture and food, mobility orientation law, anti-waste law for a circular economy, law to combat disruption climate and strengthening resilience in the face of its effects, the green policy of this five-year term has been a succession of announcement effects, broken promises and inaction such as the ban on glyphosate, neonicotinoids, endocrine disruptors, eggs from battery-raised hens; but also the closure of coal-fired power stations or the exit from nuclear power. The Government could also have affirmed a “green” policy. by organizing a moratorium on 5G requested by many elected officials and described as Amish by Emmanuel Macron; or one providing for real ecological compensation in the 100 billion euro recovery plan. So many missed opportunities! The associative newspaper Reporterre analyzed 169 measures taken by the Government since 2017 in favor of energy, mobility, agriculture, housing, climate or biodiversity and judged 89 measures taken by the current Government that are harmful to the planet, such as the free trade agreement with Canada, which will have the effect of increasing trade and greenhouse gas emissions. France's delay is such that the State has been threatened with fines since July 2020 by the Council of State of 10 million euros per semester if it does not fight more against air pollution. The Government was also judged “ responsible for inaction in the fight against global warming" following the "Affair of the Century" trial. French ecological policy can no longer be based on voluntary action or be consensual with the proponents of the ultra-liberal economic model which ravages employees, animals and the planet. This is why she asks him if the Government has taken stock of the absolute urgency of the situation and if so, what what he intends to do in concrete terms and within what time frame.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

Timeline

No timeline events have been ingested for this record yet.

Votes

No vote records are attached yet.

Versions

No version snapshots stored. Document URLs remain at the source.

Documents

No documents linked.

Sponsors

No sponsors or actors listed by the source.

Related records

No cross-record relationships stored yet.