Aerial view of air pollution in Rio de Janeiro - Apu Gomes/Folhapress/Veja

By: Henrique Freeland, Guilhermina Podcameni and Maria Julia Sala (Grade 5)

This year, Brazil is hosting the global G20 event in Rio de Janeiro city. The G20, or Group of 20, is an international forum of economic cooperation formed by nineteen countries and the European Union. Their objective is to establish strategies to develop the current world economy and discuss the main subjects tied to that. This edition, however, will include the modern environmental issues as a topic, especially regarding energetic transition.

This term refers to the structural change of types of energy matrix. Nowadays, the majority of the world’s energy matrix comes from non-renewable resources, and fossil fuels are the most used ones. As various studies have pointed out over the years, the excessive use of fossil fuels has been one of the main contributors to current environmental problems, such as atmospheric pollution, intense climate change and the increase of global warming, all aggravated by the greenhouse gasses emitted from that energy source. Therefore, the importance of debating energy transition in major events that includes global leaders is highlighted and, that way, the option for renewable energy resources and the reduction of the consequences caused by the ongoing one is given more attention.

Nevertheless, conferences like G20 have already happened before. The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015 by 196 parties (including Brazil), was a world arrangement that promised not only to decrease 55% of gas emissions until 2025 but also limit global warming to 1,5ºC. Otherwise, in the scientists’ predictions, it would be irreversible to change the planet’s situation. That means, this should be done until next year. However, according to a programme of the European Union, Copernicus, in 2023 the global temperature has reached 2,07ºC. Furthermore, the current numbers of gas emissions are not really following those limits. What is even more worrying is that the United Nations declared, in November of 2023, that the rules set in the Paris Agreement are not enough to handle the present global scenario. The probability of achieving this goal, in the more optimistic view, would be 14%.

In conclusion, even though nations have been and are doing several conferences and deals to manage environmental issues like global warming, the economy will always be their top priority. In a capitalistic world, where time is money, nations are wearing blindfolds and cannot see how their greed will destroy everything.

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