United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pointed to “humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels” after a recent series of climate disasters and as a report released Tuesday said the world is “moving in the wrong direction.
“Floods, droughts, heat waves, fires and extreme storms are only getting worse and breaking records with alarming frequency,” Guterres said in a video message.
“Heat waves in Europe. Colossal floods in Pakistan. Severe and prolonged droughts in China, in the Horn of Africa and in the United States. There is nothing natural about the new scale of these disasters,” he said.
“They represent the price of humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels,” according to the UN Secretary General, who calls for a move away from coal and the development of renewable energy.
These words, a few weeks before the COP27 climate conference in Egypt in November, accompany the publication of a report compiled by the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on the state of climate science.
The document shows, not surprisingly, that the world is “going in the wrong direction” in the face of climate change and its catastrophic consequences. As a result, greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise to new records and fossil fuel emissions are now above pre-pandemic Covid 19 levels.
According to preliminary data cited in the report, global CO2 emissions in January-May of this year are 1.2% higher than the same period in 2019. They are led by the United States, India and “most” European countries, according to the authors.
The warming, linked to human activity, does not know any respite. The report’s authors estimate that there is a 93% probability that at least one of the next five years will be warmer than the warmest year on record, 2016.
“All countries must increase their national climate ambitions every year, until we are on track,” pleads Antonio Guterres, who calls on “the G20, which is responsible for 80% of global emissions” to “lead the way.
Antonio Guterres called it a “scandal” that developed countries have failed to take climate change adaptation seriously and ignored their commitments to help poorer countries.
Mr. Guterres urged them to “fully” meet their commitment made at COP26 in Glasgow to provide $40 billion annually for adaptation to the effects of global warming.
Funding for adaptation must increase to at least $300 billion annually by 2030, he estimated.
