Under Heavy Security, UN Climate Chief Addresses Parallel Coal Industry Meeting In Warsaw
Most coal reserves must be left in the ground, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres told industry leaders today, if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change. Speaking at the International Coal and Climate Summit, which is being held this week alongside UN negotiations to move towards a global climate change deal, Figueres said that the coal industry must undergo “rapid transformation” that will “go to the core of the coal industry”.
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Figueres’ appearance at the summit has caused her to clash with NGOs and activist groups, who asked her to boycott the summit, and have questioned Poland’s motivation for allowing a coal trade summit to take place alongside the UN climate talks. The event took place under heavy security, where even bottles of water were treated with suspicion by guards.
UK Minister for Climate Change Greg Barker said that the decision to hold the coal summit at the same time as the UN negotiations was “interesting” while Poland’s environment minister Marcin Korolec says opponents of the coal summit are “very strange, if not worrying”. Figueres said that by joining the gathering, she was neither tacitly approving the use of coal, nor calling for its immediate disappearance.
Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the summit a “distraction” from the aims of the UN conference currently underway in Warsaw’s National Stadium. “The summit’s focus on continued reliance on coal is directly counter to the goal of these climate negotiations, which is to dramatically reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” he said.
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http://www.rtcc.org/2013/11/18/coal-industry-must-face-climate-reality-warns-un-chief/