PARIS, December 4 (Sputnik) — World economies and oil corporations need to reject traditional energy sources and invest in renewables, French Energy Minister Segolene Royal said at the 21st UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) Friday.
"We need to be bold here…We need to think about the world without oil, we must not tap into the oil resources that we have already discovered," Royal said at a side event of the COP21 organized by Climate and Clean Air Coalition.
She stressed that the lives of millions of people are at risk due to the pollution produced by the oil industry.
French Energy Minister Urges to Engage Local Communities to Fight Climate Pollutants
The engagement of local communities worldwide is a prerequisite for tackling short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), Royal said.
"Through democracy, through engaging local communities, we can really grapple with these issues, and also transform these methane wastes into energy. There are a number of easy and simple actions that could be conducted but we need to have the local communities on board."
Royal stressed that there were different types of pollutants, generated by public and private transport, the burning of coal, as well as domestic waste.
SLCPs include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), methane, black carbon, and tropospheric ozone – all of which contribute to climate change. SLCPs stay in the atmosphere for between a few days to up to a decade and have a global warming potential many times that of CO2.
