US plans to curb climate change

“If you don’t act now, then it may be too late.” It is the warning that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body that reports directly to the United Nations, made a little over a month ago to all countries to promote environmental policies with the aim of minimizing the impact of change. climate and global warming.

That same conclusion is the one they reached at the Summit of Cities of the Americas that culminated a week ago in the US city of Denver, Colorado, with the presence of more than 3,500 leaders and more than 250 mayors from the entire region.

“We have to work together in a concrete and local way to solve issues that go beyond our borders,” said José W. Fernández, undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment of the United States Department of State during an interview with the voice of america.

Investment in the region

The senior official, who was one of the most prominent representatives of the White House at the Denver meeting, was satisfied with the willingness of the entire region to work for the environment.

“We have realized that if we don’t make that kind of investment, we suffer the consequences. And in many countries they are seeing that with a reasonable investment they can have results that benefit everyone and that create opportunities”, assured Fernández.

In this line, the US undersecretary defends that the plan to face climate change also involves promoting certain industrial sectors that also take care of the environment. For example, the renewable energy industry, which, in his opinion, “can be a way for countries to get involved in a new industry that can create jobs and economic growth.”

However, he insists that “it is about solving joint problems, acknowledging the differences, but knowing that in climate change we are all in the same boat.”

“We sink or sail together, but there are also other issues such as public transport, security, education, investment… that we have to solve together and that is what we want to do,” he added.

What is the United States doing?

But focusing the issue on climate change -one of the priorities on the agenda of US President Joe Biden- the undersecretary recalls that in the last year there has been “a lot of legislation” to promote this sector through the “clean energy subsidy , job creation” and other projects in “Chile, Colombia and other places in Latin America”.

Given this, he considers that the United States looks at the region with “investment opportunities” so that these types of industries are promoted in the southern part of the American continent. “It’s not a matter of wanting to be an angel, it’s about seeing that there are possibilities to create jobs and create wealth in these fields that have been discussed at that conference,” he said.

In addition, Fernández made reference to the forced migratory flows that have occurred in recent times, especially from Central America, where a part of the population has been forced to leave their homes due to climate change.

“You don’t have to convince a Central American that climate change has already arrived, because they are suffering from it every year and I think there are opportunities,” he insisted.

The first Summit of Cities of the Americas, which was launched at the request of President Biden at the Summit of the Americas held in June of last year in the Californian city of Los Angeles, has been the first seed that has been planted for then more agreements and understandings flourish throughout the region, especially between cities, because it is understood from the US executive that small-scale administrations are the ones that can implement this type of policy.

“From now on we are going to have several short-term meetings to see the progress that is being made on specific issues,” he said, defending that in this type of meeting “it is not about talking about philosophy”, but about looking for meeting points .

“We have to talk to see what we are going to do to reduce plastic globally and regionally, what we are going to do to create more solar energy, more wind energy and, on the subject of health, what are we going to do to cooperate and avoid that we have a next pandemic,” he said.

UN alert

The United Nations also supports the idea of ​​implementing common policies to curb the effects of climate change. In fact, a recent report also warned that the world was heading to exceed 1.5 ^either Celsius of temperature, which could cause much more adverse atmospheric phenomena, such as heavy rains, floods, great droughts or powerful cyclones, among other things.

“We are about to jump over the fence and we don’t know what is on the other side. What they tell us is that we have to do something to prevent the temperature from rising, because once we reach that point we will not be able to proceed nor will we be able to fix the problem,” he said, lamenting that “we are about to get there.” to that point.

“We owe it to our children, to our countries, to our grandchildren that they do not get there because the main commitment that every family, every country, every ruler has, is to leave a better world than what you inherited, and in that we cannot fail” , apostille.

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