Spain Ratifies Global Climate Change Agreement
Spain has joined the USA, China, India, Australia, and other
large EU nations in ratifying the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The
agreement was initially drawn up last December in the COP21 conference.
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| Climate change is needed everywhere for our planet to survive |
Spain will look to follow the terms of the Paris Agreement
and come up with ways to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius before
the end of the century. Scientists have agreed that carbon emissions must be
cut by up to 50% in most nations to prevent the global temperature from rising
to above 2 degrees Celsius; which is considered to be the point of no return
for global warming.
The Spanish Environment Minister Isabel Garcia Tejerina last
week revealed that they will ratify the details of the agreement as soon as
possible. Many people welcomed the news as the future of the Paris Agreement
was unknown following Donald Trump being elected as the next US president.
While Barack Obama pushed the American ratification of the
Agreement through earlier in the year Donald Trump, who is against the idea of
climate change, has threatened to rip it up.
The USA are in for now though, along with China, Germany,
the UK and India; some of the biggest polluters in the world. Spain have also
now joined in.
Tejerna spoke at the COP22 meeting in Morocco where she said
that ratifying the agreement means that Spain will be able to take part in
deciding the measures of the agreement. She said that the change had reached
the point where no corporation or government could stop it, and that we would
have to see how the new American administration will react.
There was one time when Spain was the global leader in
renewable energy. There was a time when power from wind and solar energy
accounted for 15% of the power in the nation. Since 2011 things have gone a
little backwards however. Spain has since scrapped the generous subsidies that
made it easy and profitable for people to install solar panels, and now there
is even a controversial “sun tax”; which is when people are charged to return
their solar power to the national grid.
It’s expected that this ruling could be rescinded in the new
government though. Solar power is becoming cheaper to install and will only
continue to get cheaper, so there is little to no need for government support.
