Net zero should not be an excuse to not get off fossil fuels, says Spinoza Prize winner Joyeeta Gupta
Joyeeta Gupta, professor of environment and development in the Global South at the University of Amsterdam, won the Spinoza Prize, the highest award in Dutch academia, sometimes referred to as the Dutch Nobel prize. Gupta’s work lies at the intersection of climate crisis, governance and justice, and the jury recognised it as “extremely broad and interdisciplinary”: She was also the lead author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 along with former US vice-president Al Gore.
Currently in Delhi, she spoke to Indulekha Aravind about the inadequacies of the global response to the climate crisis, why net zero could be a fig leaf and why she feels growth should not be measured in terms of GDP alone. Edited excerpts:We are living in a world where climate extremities are increasing, from fires in Canada and Greece to flooding in Delhi. Is the global response to this adequate?For the last 33 years — since 1990, when the negotiations began on climate change —my feeling has been that all the countries are waiting for others to take action and as a consequence, there’s been a continuous delay in action.
In the beginning, the developing countries were really keen that the developed countries take action. At that time, the US claimed it was not easy for them to do so if developing countries in the long term did not take action.
As a consequence, there is a situation where no one is willing to break that trend and take leadership. The EU was doing a relatively good job till the war on Ukraine broke out.
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