'It is a sort of apocalyptic future that I'm painting here and not one that I would wish our grandchildren to go into,' says Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environmental Programme.
Steam and exhaust rise from the power plant of STEAG on a cold winter day on Jan. 6, 2017 in Oberhausen, Germany.
UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen emphasizes that current trends will result in uninhabitability of parts of the planet and an influx in climate refugees, among other problems.We're heading right now to a 2.8 degree world. And we can take some actions that we've promised and we think we've made a big dent, but [even with these actions] we will arrive at [a] 2.6 degree world by 2100,” Andersen says. “So there is a long way to go.
Within individual nations, the report acknowledges, are more inequities in consumption and emissions. The top 1% of consumption households pollute substantially more than the bottom 50% of households.This is an issue of environmental justice and steep, entrenched economic disparity. Andersen calls for a global economic about-face.
“The transport sector similarly so; That's the second largest source of energy related CO2 emissions. And here we need to ensure that we invest in e-vehicles and, of course, that we invest in public transport as well.