Nikos Mantzaris participated in newsbomb.gr‘s mini-documentary and the related feature entitled “From Climate Change to Climate Crisis: Humanity in uncharted disaster territory“.
He described the climate crisis as the greatest challenge facing humanity along with that of biodiversity loss. In order to address this challenge, the stressed the importance of the climate targets set both at European and national level through the first National Climate Law, to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 and a 55% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. He underlined, however, that despite progress on climate commitments by Europe and other countries in the world, humanity is still off track in limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5oC, a threshold beyond which the future of life on the planet will be bleak.
He also used data to show that the current energy crisis, which is a fossil fuel crisis, has already accelerated the shift to renewable energy. Greece in particular has in recent years made significant progress in its climate performance mainly due to the development of renewables in conjunction with the drastic reduction in the use of lignite for electricity generation, a fossil fuel which was responsible for more than one third of the greenhouse gas emissions of the whole country during the last 30 years. He made it clear, however, that reducing emissions in the power sector is not enough for the country to meet its climate targets. This will require breakthroughs in the industrial sector, whose carbon footprint has remained stagnant and consistently high for many years, as well as major changes in the transport model with a focus on the development of electromobility.
You can read the full feature by journalist Sotiris Skouloudis, which was published on 25 September, at newsbomb.gr (in Greek).
Here follows the mini-documentary (in Greek), where other participants included: Grigoris Tsaltas, Professor of International Law, former Rector of Panteion University and former Rector of Panteion University and former Minister of Environment; Alexandros Moulopoulos, Energy and Climate officer of WWF Greece; Stavros Mavrogenis, Doctor of International Law and Policy for Climate Change and Gabriel Xanthopoulos, Director of Research at the Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems, ELGO “DIMITRA”, specializing in forest fires.
