Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1504229
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 23 JULY 2023 8 INTERVIEW Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt 'Fighting climate change' also means Last week, the European Par- liament finally reached an agreement on implementing part of the so-called 'EU Green Deal'. However, the debate exposed deep political divi- sions over the EU's carbon neutrality targets: and else- where, there appears to be a public backlash against some of those commitments. In Ger- many, for instance, there is resistance to the imposition of 'solar heating pumps', on the basis that households will face higher costs. Meanwhile, the effects of climate change are being felt more strongly all over the European continent: with bushfires, heatwaves, floods, and so on. At a glance, it appears that Europe is los- ing the battle against climate change. Do you agree with that assessment, first of all? Well, let me put it this way. Europe definitely has a long way to go; but it is still the best-placed continent to deal with what is happening; as well as the best-prepared, and the most committed by far. In fact – just to put things in- to perspective – let's go back to where [climate change aware- ness] all started, way back in 1988. Because that was the time when various scientific reports first started showing that - because of fossil fuel consumption, for energy gen- eration - the planet was wit- nessing an artificial injection of carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases. These gases exist normally in the atmos- phere; but because of human activity, through the burning of fossil fuels, there was a further increase of these greenhouse gases that are trapping more heat, and hence causing cli- mate change. Those first reports, back in 1988, had already indicated what we know is happening, today: including heatwaves, extreme cold spells, and ex- treme weather event such as ty- phoons, hurricanes, etc. These, again, are all natural phenom- ena which were always known to happen, occasionally; but which we began to see happen- ing more frequently, and with further intensity. This is, of course, true of Mal- ta as well: where we have wit- nessed heatwaves in summer; floods in winter; and so on. So even back in 1988, there was already an awareness of what was happening. And there were also specific predictions: such as, for instance, that an- nual precipitation would de- crease, particularly in the Med- iterranean region... Well, that prediction has cer- tainly come true, since then... Exactly. In the same year, however, it was Malta's initi- ative to raise this issue at the United Nations General As- sembly: in order to give the matter the right level of polit- ical awareness. Because it's all well and good, to have 'scientif- ic reports'; but if they are just going to sit there, gathering dust on a shelf somewhere... nothing's going to happen. You can't effect change – political change, especially – without a political commitment to act. This was Malta's suggestion; and it was widely accepted. In fact, there was unanimous ap- proval of a decision, there and then, to start working on... well, let's call it an 'agreement', at this stage: because it took a bit of time for it to actually be called a 'treaty'. To simplify matters: let's just say that it was immediately un- derstood that this was a prob- lem on a scale that humanity had never faced before. And it was a problem unlike any of the other environmental issues the world was used to facing, at the time: like, for instance, a par- ticular source of pollution. Perhaps the closest equiva- lent, back in the 1980s, was the issue regarding the so-called 'Hole in the Ozone Layer'. In fact, a few years before, there had been the success story of the Montreal Protocol: which resulted in an agreement to ban ozone depleting substanc- es. But that was one, single issue; and it was easy – well, 'relatively' easy - to tackle both the source of the problem itself; and also, to find and provide al- ternatives [to the banned sub- stances]. But with climate change, the situation was different. The reports were clearly indicative that harm was being caused: there were satellite images showing that river-deltas were shrinking; glaciers were melt- ing; even the amount of car- bon dioxide trapped in ice was clearly increasing over time. So the evidence was there, right from the start. But the question of how, and to what extent, this process was actually occurring; and especially, the 'causal link' between a particular action – in this case, 'burning fossil fuels' - and extreme weath- er events, around the world... such a direct linkage could not be traced, at the time. And that is a problem that we still face, today. In fact, the problem you de- scribe is still what fuels so much of the climate scepti- cism, which is hampering a political solution right now... Yes. But in any case, this is where it all started. It took two years to conclude the first treaty, which signed during the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. But the more the polit- ical process unfolded, the more complex it became. There was a realisation of how wide-rang- ing the kind of intervention ac- tually needed to be... bearing in mind that we're talking about fossil fuels, which – in a nut- shell – drive the entire world's economy. Meanwhile, the only other readily-available alternative to fossil fuels, at the time, was nuclear energy: which was also considered to be highly risky, especially so soon after the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. So the need to find alterna- tives, was definitely pointing towards renewable energy. But the process was very, very slow. Today, after so many years, we have the Paris Agreement; then there was the Kyoto Protocol - which was not a success, un- fortunately; in the sense that, while Europe took it serious- ly, and started its own legal framework to combat climate change, it remained isolated. This was before the enlarge- ment of 2004; and European Union still consisted of only around 12 states. Nonetheless, Nobody goes on a diet because they enjoy making sacrifices. They do it to improve their health, and overall quality of life. Prof Simone Borg, academic and Malta's ambassador for Climate Change, argues that it is the same with the fight to save our planet from rising temperatures