Call to action over global warming at youth summit
Play
A call to raise awareness on climate change was made Friday at the One Young World Summit Bangkok, with 2015 highlighted as the turning point to tackle the problem.
The director of sustainability at Berlin-based multinational conglomerate Siemens AG, told the conference everyone had to recognise the threat of global warming and play a part in reducing global carbon dioxide emissions
to less than 1,000 gigatons this century.
Rabe said it was imperative the rising world temperature did not increase by more than two degrees Celsius.
He said this year was the critical time before the point of no return.
“Since the industrial revolution, we have emitted 2,000 gigatans of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and we approximately release 40 to 50 gigatans of carbon dioxide every year. If this trend continues, the global temperature will rise five degrees Celsius by the end of this century,” he said.
He warned that if such a scenario happened, a tremendous impact would be felt worldwide and Bangkok would be submerged under water – the same as most coastal cities around the world.
“Even with the COP (Paris Climate Conference) pledges to reduce the CO2 emissions, the temperature will rise 2.7 degrees Celsius in the year 2100. We have to do more than that by limiting the CO2 emissions to no more than 1,000 gigatons, which means we have to leave three quarters of all fossil fuels underground and use clean energy,” he said.
