The News
Former Colombian President Iván Duque on Wednesday said that US President Donald Trump’s climate change denial was “an absurd ideological debate.”
“Climate change is undeniable,” Duque told PBS anchor and Semafor contributor Amna Nawaz at Semafor’s The Next 3 Billion summit.
“You cannot deny that climate change exists and the effects it produces,” Duque said when asked for his reaction to Trump’s longstanding claim that global warming is a hoax.
Duque’s remarks came just a day after Trump said during his address to the United Nations General Assembly that climate change is “the greatest con job,” despite overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real, getting worse, and largely driven by human activity.
“Evidence shows that we have to act,” said Duque. He pointed to Colombia as being responsible for just 0.6% of the world’s greenhouse gasses emissions, but in the top 20 countries worst affected by climate change. Duque also flagged that despite Colombia’s polarized political landscape, there was unanimous support in the country’s Congress for a Climate Action Bill, which laid out steps including expanding protected areas and developing new energy sources.
Know More
Duque also spoke about the opportunities for Latin America as a potential hub for energy-hungry artificial intelligence data centers, largely because of the continent’s commitment to developing renewable energy.
“Latin America can become a promised land for sustainable data centers in the AI revolution. That I think is an opportunity for the Global South,” he said.