United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has pointed the finger at “humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels” after a recent series of climate disasters and as a report released on Tuesday stresses that the world is “going into the wrong direction “.
“Floods, droughts, heat waves, fires and extreme storms are only getting worse and breaking records with worrying frequency,” Guterres said in a video message.
“Heatwaves in Europe. Colossal floods in Pakistan. Severe and prolonged droughts in China, the Horn of Africa and the United States. There is nothing natural in 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 an exit from coal and the development of renewable energies.
These remarks, a few weeks before the COP27 on climate, scheduled for Egypt in November, accompany the publication of a report compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) of the UN on the state of climate science.
Still more GHGs
The document unsurprisingly shows that the world is “going in the wrong direction” in the face of climate change and its catastrophic consequences.
Greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise with new records and fossil fuel emissions are now above pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.
According to preliminary data cited in the report, global CO2 emissions between January and May this year are 1.2% higher than the same period in 2019. They are driven by the United States, India and “most from European countries, according to the authors.
Global warming, linked to human activity, knows no respite. The report’s authors estimate that there is a 93% chance 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 “.
Scandal “
Antònio Guterres has called it a “scandal” that developed countries have, in his view, failed to take issues of adaptation to the effects of climate change seriously and ignored their commitments to help poorer countries.
Mr. Guterres urged them to “fully” respect their commitment made at COP26 in Glasgow to pay US$40 billion a year for adaptation to the effects of global warming.
Adaptation funding must increase to at least $300 billion annually by 2030, he said.