The Climate Change Law must be equitable so that all countries can contribute their grain of sand and reduce its effects. For this purpose, the future law that will be drawn up on climate change it will provide for a just transition for all sectors.
On what is this «just transition"?
Future Climate Change Law
The energy transition is based on the reduction of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas and an increase in renewable energies. This is intended to achieve a future economy based on decarbonization. However, each country, depending on its economic situation, can afford to stop emitting greenhouse gases and invest in clean energy or not. For it, the future Climate Change Law, It must contemplate a just energy transition for all those countries that cannot afford a low-emission development model, as would be the case for all those that base their economy on the exploitation of coal.
If a country whose economy is founded on the exploitation of fossil fuels, It cannot be required to reduce emissions, since it would affect the entire country in a drastic and inevitable way. Therefore, an attempt will be made for the interministerial commission that works on this rule, which will regulate Spain's compliance with the Paris Agreement, to identify all the issues that will be addressed in the future law and to design a just transition for all.
Topics covered in the law
For the preparation and design of the law, issues such as the new short-term and long-term emission reduction targets by sectors have been addressed. For it, it is intended to provide financing so that everything that is raised in the law can be carried out, together with compensatory measures to those countries that have sectors that are more vulnerable to decarbonization.
All these matters that are intended to be addressed will appear in the first draft of the law, which is expected to come to light during the first quarter of 2018, since first the Government must consult all the political groups and the rest of the social actors involved to reach an agreement.
For the elaboration of this law, the conclusions obtained during the development of the Bonn Climate Summit (COP23) in which it is consolidated that no country has backed down from the Paris Agreement, after the United States left.
Impacts of climate change
What is really urgent is how to act more quickly in the face of the increasingly frequent and intense effects of climate change. After COP23, there have been numerous advances in the rules that have to be developed for the Paris Agreement to work and that must be concluded by the end of 2018. There is still a lot of work pending if a just transition is to be achieved. The climate diplomats they will have to hold additional meetings before the next summit to detail these points.
Since the events that are taking place on the planet related to climate change can only be understood with the influence of human action, a solution must be found as soon as possible.
The special report of the intergovernmental panel of experts on climate change (IPCC) on the impacts of climate change on a world 1,5 degrees higher, which will be presented in September 2018, is well advanced and has had 12.000 scientific comments. In addition, more than 2.000 climate change experts from 124 countries are working.
It is quite difficult to achieve the objective of the Paris Agreement of not achieving an increase in average temperatures above 1,5 degrees Celsius. However, it is an objective that must be taken into account and that must be the basis of all climate change policies that are carried out from now on.