Climate crisis, 3.6 billion people at risk

It is not a threat to the future. The climate emergency is already threatening the survival of 3.6 billion women and men who live in the most sensitive areas of the planet. Those who contributed the least to pollution: 80 percent of emissions are produced by the G20 countries, while the poorest countries, which are responsible for less than 10 percent of greenhouse gases, suffer 75 percent of the losses. And in which global warming is causing an increase in mortality 15 times greater than in the rest of the world. Since 2008, an average of 21.5 million people have been displaced annually by extreme weather or damage caused by rising temperatures to local economies. Damages over the past half century are approaching 4,300 billion dollars.

In light of this scientific evidence, it is understandable why inaction in the face of climate change is a clear violation of human rights, as the European Court of Human Rights said on April 9.

"An offense against God, a sin that is not only personal but also structural", defined Pope Francis in his message to international leaders who gathered in Dubai last year at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28). The Pope repeated the same words when signing, as the first signatory of the "Protocol on Resilience to Climate Change", which was just presented by a group of researchers, experts, religious leaders, local administrators from different parts of the planet at a summit organized by the Pontifical Academies. sciences and social sciences. The text, modeled after the Montreal Document on Ozone Protection, provides guidelines to enable the world's population, starting with the most sensitive, to better withstand the effects of global warming. The aim is to submit it to the United Nations so that it can be accepted by the 197 signatory countries of the Convention against Climate Change, from which the COP was born. "Adapting to climate risks is already lagging behind and has become a central theme of climate action. We need a global effort to build resilience to climate change," said Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the University of California, San Diego and Cornell University, an advisor to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. (Lucia Capuzzi, more at avvenire.it)