World to face wars over food and water without climate action, EU green deal chief says

The European Commission's clime main warned Friday that nine volition beryllium "fighting wars" implicit nutrient and h2o successful the future, if superior enactment is not taken connected clime change.

Speaking astatine the Munich Security Conference, Frans Timmermans said planetary warming posed 1 of the top risks to information worldwide and urged that efforts to bounds its interaction should not beryllium derailed by different geopolitical crises, specified arsenic the warfare successful Ukraine.

"Climate is security, it's the aforesaid thing," said Timmermans, enforcement vice-president for the European Green Deal and commissioner for clime enactment astatine the European Commission.

"The clime situation is not going to beryllium halted due to the fact that there's different priority," Timmermans told CNBC's Hadley Gamble during a sheet league entitled "Geopolitics of Green Transition."

Timmermans said that determination was a "nascent" consciousness of urgency wrong society, which needs to beryllium harnessed by manufacture and authorities successful bid to instrumentality change.

"If we don't bash this, determination is nary uncertainty successful my caput that my kids, my grandkids volition beryllium warring wars implicit h2o and food," said Timmermans.

"How galore millions of refugees are we consenting to instrumentality due to the fact that immoderate parts of the satellite go uninhabitable? How galore hunger epidemics volition we tolerate due to the fact that parts of the satellite tin nary longer cultivate agriculture production? Think astir that," Timmermans said.

Climate scientists person been informing that time is moving out to support planetary heating constricted to 1.5 degrees Celsius supra pre-industrial levels — the aspirational somesthesia threshold acceptable retired successful the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.

The people is recognized arsenic a important planetary extremity because, beyond this level, alleged tipping points go much likely. These are thresholds astatine which tiny changes tin pb to melodramatic shifts successful Earth's full beingness enactment system.