Climate change ‘our greatest threat’, UN told

The naturalist Sir Attenborough has said change is humanity’s threat in thousands of years.

The broadcaster said it could lead to the collapse of civilisations and the extinction of “much of the natural world”.

He was speaking at the opening ceremony of United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Katowice, Poland.

The meeting is the most critical on climate change since the 2015 Paris agreement. Sir David said: “Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate change.

“If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction

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of much of the natural world horizon.”

The naturalist is taking up the “People’s Seat” at the conference, called COP24. He is supposed to act as a link between the public and policy-makers at the meeting.

“The world’s people have spoken. Their message is clear. Time is running out. They want you, the decision-makers, to act now,” he said.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Antonio Guterres, UN SecretaryGeneral, said climate change was already “a matter of life and death” for many countries. He explained that the world is “nowhere near where it needs to be” on the transition to a low-carbon economy. is on the

Photo: Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters Honduran migrants, who are part of a caravan of thousands from Central America, try to climb over a border fence to cross illegally from Tijuana, Mexico to the US yesterday