New York becomes epicenter of climate struggle for two weeks

Hundreds of environmental activists gathered this week in New York (
United States), to put pressure on world leaders at the United Nations to raise their climate commitments. On the agenda are events, rallies and a unique youth summit organized by the UN.

Nearly 500 young South Americans, Europeans, Asians and Africans, as well as Sweden's Greta Thunberg, are scheduled to attend the first UN climate summit on Saturday. A major event is also scheduled for Friday, coordinated with hundreds of others around the world.

Preamble at UN climate summit next week

Since last year, Friday has become the day of "school strike for climate", an initiative launched by Greta Thunberg that has spread like wildfire around the world. The following Friday, September 27, during the UN General Assembly, another coordinated global strike will take place. New York, which will also host a week of side events on climate,
allowed his students to dry classes.

This image of children and teenagers bottling the streets of New York for "our burning house" will be the preamble to a special climate summit next Monday at the UN, with a hundred heads of state and government, including Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel. Many leaders subscribe to the idea of ​​a climate emergency, but they will be expected on concrete details of their climate plans, with two central issues: the closures of the last coal-fired plants and the end of other fossil fuels, such as gas and oil.

The objectives of the Paris agreement are far from being achieved

Some 60 countries are expected to announce enhanced climate plans, according to Alden Meyer, an expert from the US NGO Union of Concerned Scientists, but not likely large emitters, he said. "It's a marathon, not a sprint," said Alden Meyer. The real deadline is the end of 2020, when the Paris Agreement will require signatories to review their copies. But we will watch the signals sent, especially by China. For the moment, only Morocco and The Gambia have "compatible" commitments with the objective of the 2015 Paris agreement, according to the Climate Action Tracker.

To have a chance to stop global warming at + 1.5 ° C (compared to the nineteenth century), the world should be carbon neutral in 2050, according to the latest consensus of scientists mandated by the UN. We are far from it. Last year brought a harvest of bad news. Humans have never released as much carbon dioxide into the air as they did in 2018. This summer's heatwave made July 2019 the hottest record on Earth since 1880. The last four years were the four warmest . And studies have revealed that the polar ice caps are melting even faster than we thought.

"Something is happening right now"

Among the 500 young participants of Saturday's summit, the UN has invited 100 all expenses paid, by offsetting the carbon emissions of their flights: an eco-entrepreneur from Mauritius and another from Indonesia, founders of associations in Argentina or Guatemala, environmental activists … Some are seasoned with the bureaucratic machinery and jargon of international negotiations, like the Frenchman Girschig Côme, 24 years old. "Greta has opened a door," he said, asking, "It's great to have the youth on the street say they are anti-capitalist and want to change the system, but what do we do instead? "

This moderate ecologist is vegan and anti-aircraft, but not absolutist: "If everyone eats less meat once a day, it is more effective than if 5% of the population is perfectly vegan". He wants the young movement to go beyond extremism and give birth to concrete proposals. From Brazil will arrive Friday João Henrique Alves Cerqueira, 27 years old, involved in various NGOs for five years. "I'm a little skeptical, I'm not at my first UN conference," he said. "But something is happening right now." As for "Greta," he admires, but adds, "It would be great for the world to hear other voices from the South and indigenous communities."