‘Put a big fat price on carbon’: OECD chief bows out with climate rally cry

‘Put a big fat price on carbon’: OECD chief bows out with climate rally cry

The environment, climate change and the protection of nature must be the defining tasks of rich and major developing countries now and in the years to come, the outgoing head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has said, and the institutions that advise governments must take responsibility for keeping them focused on those tasks.

Ángel Gurría said the coronavirus crisis must be dealt with as a matter of urgency, but that the biggest task after that would be tackling the world's environmental emergencies.

"The single most urgent, emergent, immediate risk is to combat Covid-19, and its health, economic and social consequences,“ he told the Guardian. "But the single most important intergenerational responsibility is to protect the planet “¦ We are on a collision course with nature and we have to change course for future generations.“

The OECD secretary general listed the ways in which the world needed to act: "To protect biodiversity, to stop it from being degraded; to protect soil; to protected lands and water; to protect the oceans from the worst overfishing; to protect coral reefs, which are in danger of disappearing at 2C [of global heating]; to protect mangroves, which are extraordinary carbon sinks; glaciers and so on.“

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