{"id":4438,"date":"2022-01-19T21:37:05","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T21:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/19\/german-leader-champions-new-tack-on-climate-at-davos-event\/"},"modified":"2022-01-19T21:37:05","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T21:37:05","slug":"german-leader-champions-new-tack-on-climate-at-davos-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/19\/german-leader-champions-new-tack-on-climate-at-davos-event\/","title":{"rendered":"German leader champions new tack on climate at Davos event"},"content":{"rendered":"

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GENEVA — New German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Wednesday for a \u201cparadigm shift\u201d in the way the world approaches climate policy, saying his country would leverage its presidency of the Group of Seven industrial nations this year to push for standards to fight global warming.<\/p>\n

Climate discussions have been a key theme this week at a World Economic Forum meeting, which is being held online after COVID-19 concerns delayed its annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland. It included a panel with U.S. special envoy on climate John Kerry and billionaire Bill Gates that featured ideas environmentalists and scientists have challenged: that innovations yet to be invented or used widely would help drastically reduce emissions.<\/p>\n

Unlike events such as last year’s U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the Davos meeting is more of a discussion of big ideas \u2014 not where concrete agreements are made on how to act. Critics regularly fault the Davos event, whose origins date to 1971, for hosting economic and political elites who voice high-minded but often empty goals that are deemed out of touch with the needs of regular people.<\/p>\n

In an address, Scholz focused on ambitions by Germany and the wider European Union to fight climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cEurope has decided to become the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050; Germany wants to reach that goal in 2045 already \u2026 a monumental task, but a task that we can and will master,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Scholz added that Germany will use its G-7 presidency to \u201cturn that group into the nucleus of an international climate club.”<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we want to achieve is a paradigm shift in international climate policy. We will no longer wait for the slowest and least ambitious,” he said. \u201cInstead, we will lead by example, and we will turn climate action from a cost factor into competitive advantage by agreeing on joint minimum standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scholz said the \u201cclimate club,\u201d which he first announced months ago when he was finance minister, would be open to all countries.<\/p>\n

Several groups of countries have similar goals, including the High Ambition Coalition that aims to achieve the strictest target in the Paris climate accord \u2014 limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century compared with pre-industrial times.<\/p>\n

Critics say such groups often include members with less-than-stellar climate records. Both Germany and the United States, for example, are not on track to meet their emission reduction goals and have pushed back against granting poor countries the kind of funding they seek to tackle climate change.<\/p>\n

The targets Scholz suggested for the climate club \u2014 the 1.5-degree cap and climate neutrality by 2050 \u2014 are already part of or implied by the Paris accord. More significant, Scholz said the club could seek to achieve those goals \u201cby pricing carbon and preventing carbon leakage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those proposals are designed to prevent companies from shifting carbon-heavy industries to countries with less stringent emissions rules and putting nations like Germany at a competitive disadvantage.<\/p>\n

While the idea has strong support within the European Union, whose members are used to negotiating compromise agreements for the common good, getting the U.S. and major developing countries such as China and India on board will be trickier.<\/p>\n

Representing the U.S., Kerry urged businesses and governments to accelerate efforts to get technologies to scale that will help drastically reduce carbon emissions. Speaking on a panel about climate innovation, Kerry said most \u201ccritical technologies\u201d needed to reduce emissions were not moving fast enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world has to pick up the pace,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He and other panelists talked about \u201ccarbon capture,\u201d the process of capturing and storing carbon dioxide before it gets into the atmosphere, and \u201cgreen hydrogen,\u201d splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen with energy from low-carbon sources.<\/p>\n

The idea that technologies and markets are central to the climate change fight is a popular in some circles but also controversial because technologies like carbon capture are expensive, energy intensive and far from being used widely.<\/p>\n

Carbon capture also was mentioned by an energy company executive in a separate panel on the energy transition, where Saudi Arabia\u2019s energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, stressed that the major oil producer was \u201cproactively engaged with everybody\u201d as the world tries to reduce emissions.<\/p>\n

The prince said fossil fuels would play a role alongside renewables and urged countries to use \u201cevery tool in the kit,\u201d including cleaner ways to use fossil fuels rather than simply eliminating them.<\/p>\n

A group of Latin American leaders also discussed climate change in another panel, urging accountability from the largest carbon-emitting nations and help funding green agendas.<\/p>\n

Guatemala President Alejandro Giammattei tied climate change to migration in the region because it saps resources, hampering growth opportunities. He said Central America barely causes 0.33% of greenhouse gases, but countries there \u201csuffer the most.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year, we have to rebuild the country because there are hurricanes,\u201d Giammattei said. \u201cMany of our resources that should be dedicated to the generation of new opportunities must be directed toward the construction of roads, bridges, drinking water systems.”<\/p>\n

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Associated Press writers Geir Moulson and Frank Jordans in Berlin, David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, Regina Garcia Cano in Mexico City and Peter Prengaman in Phoenix contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

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Follow all AP stories on climate change at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/climate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n