Spanish
Geneva, June 30 (EFE).- The UN Human Rights Council opened a debate this Monday on the need to end fossil fuels, as they are considered the main factor in global warming, generating increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather phenomena.
"We need a change that puts an end to the production and use of fuels and other activities destructive to the environment in all sectors, including energy, agriculture, finance or construction," highlighted the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, at the opening of the debate.
The high commissioner emphasized that this energy transition "will be one of the largest the world has ever seen", and acknowledged the difficulties in its implementation in an economy where around six million jobs in the fossil fuel sector could be lost.
However, "current consumption and production patterns are unsustainable, and renewable energies must be the source of the future, having multiplied their generation capacity by five between 2011 and 2023," said the Austrian.
Türk, on the other hand, warned about the efforts of large fossil fuel companies to hinder this transition "by perpetuating misinformation and presenting false solutions that attempt to distract from the ongoing damage caused."
In the debate in the Council, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of human rights in the context of climate change, Elisa Morgera, also participated, who agreed on the need to urgently end the use of energies that are the main cause of global warming.
"We still have time to have a safer climate, despite having experienced -consecutively- the ten warmest years on record and having crossed the 1.5-degree rise limit in temperatures in 2024," the expert assured.
Morgera acknowledged that the transition is complicated in the current geopolitical context, although he stressed that despite this "it must be implemented immediately and at all levels".
