Akm Shehabuddin Kisslu: “The data show that the world is in trouble.” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres emphasized during his remarks at the Natural History Museum in New York City on Wednesday. Secretary General Guterres urged to world leaders, especially those in G20 countries, to do more to meet climate goals by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping people adapt to climate events, describing the present as “climate crunch time.”
The new climate warnings were announced on world environment day Wednesday. The planet is experiencing its warmest May on record – in turn bringing the tally to twelve consecutive months of record-breaking globally, according to the a climate report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on the world .Places like Southeast Asia and India saw record early-summer high temperatures in the month of May.
UN Secretary General António Guterres warned that we stand at “a moment of truth”.
“In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger – we are the danger. But we are also the solution.”
“The battle for 1.5 degrees will be won or lost in the 2020s,” Antonio Guterres said.
He said a half degree difference in global warming could mean some island States or coastal communities disappearing forever.
Scientists point out that the Greenland Ice Sheet and West Antarctic Ice Sheet could collapse and cause catastrophic sea level rise. Whole coral reef systems could disappear along with 300 million livelihoods – if the 1.5℃ goal is not met.
Extreme weather from East Asia to the western seaboard of the US has been turbocharged by climate chaos “destroying lives, pummeling economies and hammering health”, said the Secretary-General.
Citing the latest European Commission Copernicus Climate Change Service report showing last month was the hottest May in history, the UN chief said global emissions need to fall nine per cent every year just to keep the 1.5℃ temperature rise limit above pre-industrial levels alive.
Last year they went up by one per cent.
UN Secretary General Guterres for the first time called for countries to regulate fossil fuel advertising in a manner similar to the tobacco industry, labeling it as harmful to human health. He also called on the public relations industry to stop representing fossil fuel clients and for news media and tech companies to stop accepting their advertising.
“We are playing Russian roulette with our planet,” he said. “We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell. And the truth is … we have control of the wheel.”
Stronger, more specific national climate plans are due at next year’s climate summit – COP30 – in Brazil, he said.
UNSG Guterres called for 33 specific actions, broken into four categories: slashing emissions, protecting people from harm from climate events, boosting climate finance, and clamping down on the fossil fuel industry.
WMO report found. There is also an 80% chance that at least one of those years will temporarily exceed the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold, according to the report.
The global average annual temperature for each year between 2024 and 2028 is predicted to be between 1.1 Celsius and 1.9 Celsius higher than the average temperature during the years of the pre-industrial reference period, from 1850 to 1900, also according to the report.
This year’s World Environment Day comes with a sobering reminder about the severity of global warming, according to climate experts in the report.
The WMO report includes more evidence that the planet is very close to failing to meet the Paris Agreement climate targets, which aim to limit the average global temperature increase to 1.5 Celsius since the Industrial Revolution on the moderate emissions scenario, and a 2-degree Celsius rise in the worst-case scenario.
There also is an increasing likelihood that the world will temporarily surpass the 1.5 Celsius target of additional warming more often, which has already happened several times this year, according to the report.
And the heat is not expected to relent. There is an 86% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, between 2024 and 2028, will surpass 2023 to become the warmest on record, the
