This 2024 has probably been the hottest year in recorded history, marking a critical point in the fight against climate change. Faced with this situation, United Nations officials have warned of the need for a “drastic” reduction in emissions in 2025 and for more responsible action to move towards a renewable future.
In his end-of-year message, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stated this Monday that “the world has to abandon this path to perdition” as time is upon us. He acknowledged that in 2024 it had been difficult to find hopeful reasons, but that the solution lay in “activists who raise their voices for progress, in humanitarian heroes who help vulnerable people, in developing countries that fight for justice.” financial and climatic and in the scientists who open new paths for the benefit of humanity,” he added.
2024 completes a “decade of deadly heat” – in the words of Guterres – in which the 10 years with the highest average temperatures since records have been recorded have been recorded. Furthermore, this year could be the first in which the average rise in temperatures exceeds the 1.5 degree threshold that the Paris Agreement recommended not to exceed.
The Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Celeste Saulo, also warned that “every tenth of a degree of warming matters, and increases climate extremes, their impacts and their dangers.” He stressed the urgency of acting now, since “it is our common and global responsibility,” added Saulo.
A decade of extreme heat
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) will publish in January the final figures on the average temperature of 2024, where it will be confirmed whether the records of 2023 were surpassed, so far the hottest year on record, and its report will be issued in March. complete about the climate. Even so, the head of the United Nations meteorological agency has already pointed out that “the intense heat has scorched dozens of countries, with temperatures above 50 degrees on several occasions and devastating fires.”
In addition, 2025 has been declared as the International Year of Glacier Preservation. The WMO will pay special attention to the situation of the cryosphere (poles and high mountain frozen areas), one of the environments most affected by climate change.
Guterres closed his message by asking countries to work together so that 2025 marks a “new beginning,” not as “a divided planet, but as united nations.”
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