This archive report was first published on 22 October 2019.
Published on October 22, 2019, a former Colombian president and Nobel peace laureate, Juan Manuel Santos, sounded the alarm on climate change at the World Green Economy Summit in Dubai.
According to Santos, the threat of climate change has become a certainty, surpassing the threat of nuclear war, which was a major concern after World War II.
"If we don't act, we will perish. We must act for survival," Santos emphasized.
As a staunch environmentalist, Santos won plaudits for his green policies while in office, including his efforts to bring an end to Colombia's 50-year-long civil war, for which he won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize.
Experts at the two-day conference called for more aggressive policies to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of preventing global average temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
They urged countries to reduce carbon emissions and move faster towards renewable energy and taxes on carbon emissions.
"Some countries still think that moving toward a green economy is a luxury. Actually, it has become a question of to be or not to be," said Mohamed Kafafy, president of the World Green Energy Council.
The International Monetary Fund has urged the world's biggest carbon polluting nations to agree to tax emissions at $75 per ton in the next decade to keep climate change at safe levels.
