In order to take corrective action, the world has to ween itself off the dependency on fossil fuels. And, as viewers are aware, that non-renewable energy source powers many aspects of human life. That dependency is certainly a major challenge because it is estimated that countries must reduce global emissions of carbon into the earth's atmosphere by 45%, by the year 2030.
Here's what Dr. Young had to say about the expensive transition that would need to take place to cleaner sources of energy:
Dr. Colin Young - Executive Director, Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre
"This is a very interesting topic because clearly, we need to transition away from fossil fuels that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, to cleaner renewable energy sources. And so, there are a couple of issues here. The first one is that that transition requires a significant amount of money, and access to technology to assist us to move from fossil fuel to renewable. Take for example, if we were to apply this to Belize, all of our buses: school buses, transportation buses: run on diesel and gasoline. If you want to transition your buses to electric buses, that's not going to happen by magic. That requires infrastructure, requires investment, and it requires policies and regulations. So, it's okay for the developed countries to say switch. We want to switch, so then provide the money, and provide it at the scale and at the speed that is needed to help with the transition. So, that is absolutely clear. Then, of course, we have some member-states in the region that are oil-producers, and that is an issue where they say, wait, you got wealthy, and you got rich by exploiting your natural resources, and now, you want to come and tell us that we should leave the fuel in the ground? The countries are saying, wait, if you provide the resources for us to be able to transition, we will be at the table. So, you'll notice that a lot of the call has been at the level of the developed countries to phase out coal, to transition away from fossil fuels, while it allows developing countries time to be able to transition if they provide them with the financing. But there is a whole infrastructure that is required, capacity, finance, technology, that is going to transition us away from fossil fuels.;"
