“Paris is in trouble”, President János Áder told a United Nations General Assembly session in New York on Thursday, arguing that harmful emissions globally are higher than ever.
Áder said in his address that the current demographic boom cannot be reversed, neither can countries abandon economic growth, so changes are needed to achieve the same growth by using less energy and producing less carbon dioxide.
Áder said increasing the share of solar, wind, water and nuclear in the energy mix should be accompanied by new technologies that lower energy demand while cutting emissions of harmful gases.
He said that whereas the global population had grown three and a half times the past hundred years, the world’s energy consumption had multiplied by ten. “Man is heating up the planet using fossil fuels while overturning an equilibrium of 10,000 years,” Áder said.
Since the Paris Agreement was signed to restrict global warming, the world has produced more and more renewable energies, he noted.
Still, emissions are again on the increase, especially in the US, China, and India, he added.
Áder quoted former US President Abraham Lincoln as saying that “you cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today”.
Featured image: MTI