UN chief: Climate change ‘most important issue we face’
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a dramatic appeal to world leaders Monday to take the threat of global warming seriously and to act boldly to avert a catastrophic rise in temperatures before the end of the century.
Guterres, who spoke at the opening of the U.N. climate conference in Poland, called climate change “the most important issue we face.”
“Even as we witness devastating climate impacts causing havoc across the world, we are still not doing enough, nor moving fast enough, to prevent irreversible and catastrophic climate disruption,” Guterres told delegates from almost 200 countries who gathered in the city of Katowice.
Famed British naturalist Sir David Attenborough echoed his warnings, telling the gathering that the “collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizons” if no urgent action is taking against global warming.
The 92-year-old TV presenter blamed humans for the “disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years.”
The UN chief chided countries, particularly those most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, for failing to do enough to back the 2015 Paris climate accord, which set a goal of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) - ideally 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) - by the end of the century.
Citing a recent scientific report on the dire consequences of letting average global temperatures rise beyond 1.5 degrees, Guterres urged countries to cut their emissions 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030 and aim for net zero emissions by 2050.
Net zero emissions mean that any greenhouse gases emitted need to be soaked up by forest or new technologies that can remove carbon from the atmosphere.