Susann Scherbarth- Member of the board of BUNDjugend and official at Friends of the Earth Europe's Climate Justice and Energy programme in her exclusive interview to Eurasia Diary on Climate Change and President-Elect Donald Trump's attitude to it.
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Eurasia Diary: How do you see the Climate Change’s dangerousness? Is it really a “planetary disaster”?
Susann Scherbarth: The climate science is unequivocal and truly terrifying, we just read in the Guardian few days ago science warnings that Arctic ice melt could trigger uncontrollable climate change at global level.
We are in a planetary emergency. The world is facing related challenges that threaten the lives and livelihoods of billions of people around the world: climate change and the global resource (including energy) crisis. The root cause of the climate and energy crisis, and of rampant inequality, is our broken economic system that allows corporations to wield excessive power, in pursuit of infinite profit. Corporate and elite power and interests outweigh the power of ordinary citizens and communities.
Climate impacts are already devastating lives and livelihoods, the risk of irreversible climate change draws ever closer. Continuously record breaking global temperatures are already threatening staple crops in many regions, bleaching the world's coral reefs, decimating ecosystems, and driving killer droughts and floods that have devastated the lives and livelihoods of millions of people around the world.
But also the dirty energy system that underpins climate change is itself causing immense harm to people and their local environments. From air and water pollution causing serious health impacts, through to massive land grabbing for new dirty energy mines, plants and infrastructure, it generates vast and negative consequences for people around the world.
False solutions that claim to address the climate crisis, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation’ (REDD), genetically modified organisms, carbon trading and offsetting can have terrible impacts on local communities.
We have entered ‘decade zero’ – the last few years in which we can still tackle dangerous climate change before reaching many ‘tipping points of no return’ if we take the necessary drastic action now. For the sake of the planet and its people, greenhouse gas emissions must decrease drastically, but we must not lose sight of the need for equity and justice in there.
A 1.5°C threshold, as committed in the Paris Agreement, literally demands a transformation of planetary proportions. Our current energy system – the way we produce, distribute and consume energy – is unsustainable, unjust and is harming communities, workers, the environment and the climate. That needs to change fundamentally.
Eurasia Diary: Trump described climate change as just a “weather” and Chinese “hoax”. Therefore, environmentalists launched a campaign to convince Trump in a seriousness of this issue. In your opinion, do environmentalists’ efforts will bring any positive result?
Susann Scherbarth: We are optimistic that humanity can overcome the huge challenges societies currently face, but doing so will require people working together at unprecedented scale to build a far stronger alternative to Mr Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric of hate and intolerance.
We see similarities with a rise of extreme intolerance in Europe as well, like in the UK but also in other European countries.
I like to quote the president of Friends of the Earth USA: “We will have to harness our new energy, join together, and use every strategy possible to fight against hate and greed and environmental destruction. While I wish we had a different fight before us, we must fight the one presented to us. The future of our country and planet depends on it.”
Eurasia Diary: Trump announced that he will get out of Paris and Kyoto Agreements after he become president. From your viewpoint, how big the USA’s impact on resolving the climate change issue and how big the consequences of US withdrawal from the agreements will be?
Susann Scherbarth: If the USA does choose to leave, this is not new. The USA has been outside of international climate processes before. With the election of President Bush the US decided not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in 2001.
Whether the USA leaves or not, it seems certain that a Trump presidency will make the USA a more regressive force in international climate politics in the short term.
The USA can pull out of the Paris Agreement – but it would take 4 years for the process to be completed. However, the USA can also pull out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – and thus in effect pull out of Paris Agreement. That process could take just one year.
Whatever Mr Trump decides, it will likely lead to domestic legal challenges which could hold up US withdrawal.
55.48% of global emissions are covered even if US leaves – so the Agreement remains in force. The reason we don’t have legally binding targets in the Paris Agreement is because of US pressure.
The reason why we don’t have strong targets in line with science and fairness has been because of US pressure. The reason that so many countries on the frontline of the climate crisis don’t have as much help as they need is because the US demanded that they not be
held accountable for the climate crisis.
Donald Trump has said that all US finance to climate institutions will cease. That means no US finance to the UNFCCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), or the Global Environment Facility (a hybrid between World Bank and UNFCCC). But it also means no US finance to the Green Climate Fund – the United Nations fund set up to help developing countries cope with climate impacts, and invest in clean technology. The US has pledged $3 billion but only disbursed $500 million so far. The Green Climate Fund currently has just $10 billion pledged until 2018, against a target of $100 billion by 2020.
The best and most fitting response to the threat of the USA doing less is for the EU and rich developed countries like Japan, Australia and Canada to show leadership.
The USA is just one country, albeit a large one. Mr Trump is just one man, although a powerful one. Many positive trends are unstoppable now.
On any journey there will be bumps along the way. Donald Trump is undoubtedly a big bump. And fossil fuel corporations will continue to try to delay progress. But the momentum and finance behind clean energy is so great now. It is accelerating, and it is unstoppable. The move away from fossil fuels will happen far faster than politicians think. And the more people act and demand action, the faster it will happen still.
