As an extreme year for hurricanes, wildfires and heat waves comes to an end, the head of the United Nations is challenging world leaders to make 2021 the year that humanity ends its “war on nature” and commits to a future free of planet-warming carbon pollution.
With new reports highlighting 2020’s record-breaking weather and growing fossil fuels extraction that triggers global warming, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivered yet another urgent appeal to curb climate change. It was tinged with optimism but delivered dire warnings, as the UN gears up for a Dec. 12 virtual climate summit in France on the 5th anniversary of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement.
“The state of the planet is broken,” Guterres said in a speech at Columbia University. “Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal.”
“Apocalyptic fires and floods, cyclones and hurricanes are increasingly the new normal,” he said.
In a report, the World Meteorological Organization said this year is set to end about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the last half of the 1800s, which scientists use as a baseline for warming caused by heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. Most trapped heat goes into the world’s seas, and ocean temperatures now are at record levels. It also means 2020 will go down as one of the three hottest years on record.
Guterres saw hope in promises by more than 100 countries that by mid-century they will not be adding more heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere than trees and technology can remove, along with shorter term pollution cuts. China and US President-elect Joe Biden have pledged net zero carbon emissions.
“I firmly believe that 2021 can be a new kind of leap year — the year of a quantum leap towards carbon neutrality,” Guterres said.
But he said the two UN reports Wednesday “spell out how close we are to climate catastrophe.”
Guterres said there’s no way the world can curb the climate change “without US leadership” and urged students and other Americans to do “everything you can” to get their governments to curb emissions more quickly.
“Human activities are at the root of our descent towards chaos,” Guterres said. “But that means human action can solve it.”
Rita Osakwe/Agency Reports
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