• COP26 is being held from October 31 to November 12 in Glasgow, when the target of global warming limited to 1.5 ° C seems unattainable.

  • The NGOs Care and Greenpeace presented us with three major concrete proposals that should be put in place quickly to limit CO2 emissions.

  • Financing solutions exist, in particular by stopping investing in fossil fuels.

After the catastrophic report of the IPCC this summer, the COP26 which is currently taking place in Glasgow serves as a painful reminder.

Our house is on fire, as Chirac would say, and the oven temperature is on course to rise 2.7 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era.

Under great rhetoric, endless treaties - not even signed by the biggest polluters like China or the United States - are not very binding.

Worse, carbon emissions have already returned to pre-Covid levels.

So how do you achieve the goal of limited warming to 1.5 ° C? 

20 Minutes

went to look for three concrete proposals to be implemented quickly.

Adopt binding building renovation targets

In France, housing accounts for around a quarter of CO2 emissions, "mainly because of heating", underlines Fanny Petitbon, climate manager for the NGO Care. Energy poverty still affects 3.5 million households, which the MaPrimeRénov 'device has barely affected. Only 190,000 applications were filed in 2020. Two brakes are identified: it concerns only the owners, leaving the tenants to depend on the goodwill of their lessor, and the work often only relates to one aspect of the insulation, such as the installation. in place of double glazed windows.

"We have to move towards the restrictive and massively renovate buildings," said Clément Sénéchal, climate campaign manager at Greenpeace.

The activist defends an interventionist state, which must "support the initial investment", but minimizes the cost of the operation in the long term.

“Going towards energy sobriety also means being less financially impacted by energy consumption,” he summarizes.

Changing the paradigm on transport

It is the most polluting sector in France: "31% of emissions come from transport", calculates Fanny Petitbon. There are therefore many levers in this field. On the end of the sale of vehicles running on fossil energy, Europe has set the date of 2035 as a benchmark. “But France is pushing towards 2040, when we should stop by 2030”. And to free the road for trucks, it proposes "to invest 3 billion per year over the next decade to develop rail freight, with new lines and new trains".

"We must decrease air traffic", support for his part Clément Sénéchal.

Greenpeace proposes to “remove airlines that have an alternative by train in less than 6 hours”.

The Citizen's Climate Convention had placed the cursor at the same level, finally retested by the government in favor of alternatives "in 2h30", which hardly represents any connection.

And given the number of participants who arrived in Glasgow by private jet, not sure that the argument hits the mark.

Clément Sénéchal precisely proposes to “revolutionize cultural representations”, by removing advertisements giving pride of place to SUVs or cruises, which “promote climaticide consumption”.

Divide the French herd by two

Producing a kilo of pork costs 4kg in CO2 equivalent.

The beef is certainly much less, but 10 times more polluting than producing a kilo of wheat.

So much for the vertigo when shopping.

"We must halve the number of farm animals," says Fanny Petitbon.

An observation shared by Clément Sénéchal, who is pushing for a wide introduction of vegetarian meals in collective catering.

Upheaval for French farmers?

Certainly, but current industrial agriculture "is not a model that allows them to live properly," he recalls.

Like him, Fanny Petitbon wants to “get out of dependence on synthetic pesticides, develop organic farming” which emphasizes short circuits and allows its players to be better remunerated.

And to finance all this?

These measures require an initial investment, and redeploy employees to new jobs.

But the funding is easily identified by the two activists.

"There are 15 billion euros in tax loopholes or subsidies which are used to develop climaticide activities", points out Clément Sénéchal.

Same sum found by Fanny Petitbon in the financing of fossil fuel projects abroad, to be redirected towards renewable energies.

19 countries have just agreed on the end of this type of funding from 2022… but not France.

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COP26: Nineteen countries, including the United States, commit to no longer financing fossil fuels abroad

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