The Secretary General of the United Nations, the Portuguese António Guterres, urged this Wednesday (06/05/2024) that world powers demonstrate greater commitment to the fight against climate change and stop playing “Russian roulette with the planet” . Furthermore, he compared humanity to the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs.
“We are playing Russian roulette with our planet. Everything (the future) depends on the decisions that current leaders make or do not make, especially in the next 18 months. It is the moment of truth,” said Guterres, in the framework of World Environment Day. In fact, the Secretary General advanced the figures later provided by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) regarding the increase in temperature, and noted that the Paris Agreement “hangs by a thread.”
Thousands of scientists and experts agreed in the Paris Agreement (2015) that limiting the increase in global average temperature to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial era would help avoid the worst environmental consequences. For this reason, Guterres emphasized that it is important to work to reduce the emissions “of the richest 1 percent that emit the same amount of carbon as two-thirds of humanity.”
“We are the danger”
For Guterres, G20 countries “have a responsibility” and “must go further” – as they produce 80 percent of emissions – by committing to reallocate subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable energy and to end coal by 2030. ” “We cannot accept a future in which the rich are protected in air-conditioned bubbles, while the rest of humanity is battered by a lethal climate on uninhabitable lands,” he said.
In addition, he compared the “current emergency situation” and its “disproportionate effect” for the near future with “the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs.” “In the case of the climate, we are not the dinosaurs, we are the meteorite. We are not only in danger, we are the danger. But we are also the solution,” said Guterres, leaving a silver lining for hope, for which it is vital to “maintain “the 1.5 degree threshold is in effect” and that global emissions will decrease by 9 percent each year until 2030.
Guterres’ statements come on the same day that the European climate observatory, Copernicus, reported that May 2024 was the hottest on record to date, meaning that the world has been breaking monthly records for a year. With this series of records, “the global average temperature of the last 12 months (June 2023-May 2024) is the highest ever recorded,” according to the entity.
DZC (EFE, AFP)
