Page 23 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine December 2024

bne December 2024 Companies & Markets I 23
video message, as he called on delegates to reach a binding deal.
“By 2050, there could be more plastic than fish in the ocean. Microplastics in our bloodstreams are creating health problems we’re only just beginning to understand,” he said.
The summit follows four previous rounds which began 1,000 days ago in Uruguay.
“Some plastics can take up to 1,000 years to decompose,” UNEP chief Inger Anderson said, and even then, “they break into ever smaller particles that persist, pervade and pollute...Damaging ecosystem resilience, blocking drainage in cities and also very likely harming human health and growth in plastic pollution is emitting more greenhouse gases, pushing us further into climate disaster. That is why public and political pressure for action has risen into a crescendo.”
Around 40% of the world’s plastic waste comes from packaging, says Our World in Data. Plastic is made from oil. And as much as $1.64 trillion will be needed within the next 15 years to “beat plastic pollution,” says UN estimates.
Oil-rich countries are resisting a treaty, while small island nations are those most avidly pushing for one. “You can't get to 1.5 (Celsius, as in the Paris Agreement] or probably even
a two-degree target without massively constraining plastics production,” Dennis Clare, a legal adviser for Micronesia’s negotiating team, told Politico.
40% of global plastic waste comes from packaging
Measured in tonnes per year. Data for 2019.
This year to be warmest on record, says Copernicus
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The year 2024 is almost certain to set a new record as the warmest year in documented history, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). Analysing data up through October, C3S found this year’s temperatures are set to surpass previous records that date back to 1940.
October’s global average temperature rose to 1.65 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, marking the 15th of the past 16 months in which temperatures exceeded the 1.5-degree Celsius thresh- old outlined in the Paris Agreement, C3S reported. This thresh- old is a key marker, as temperatures above this level are likely to drive more severe and unpredictable impacts of climate change.
"After 10 months, 2024 is now virtually certain to become the warmest year on record and the first to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S, said on November 7, citing the ERA5 dataset. This milestone, Burgess added, should prompt urgent action at the upcoming COP29 Climate Change Conference.
The ERA5 dataset reanalyses hourly meteorological condi- tions dating to 1979. Projections from this dataset indicate that the average global temperature for 2024 will likely surpass 1.55 degrees Celsius, up from 1.48 degrees in 2023.
C3S noted that for 2024 not to become warmer than 2023, an unprecedented drop in temperatures to almost zero would be needed for the rest of the year.
In Europe, October registered as the fifth-warmest on record, with average surface temperatures of 10.83 degrees Celsius, which is 1.23 degrees above the October norm for 1991-2022.
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