Harsh and reproachful in tone: “I’m not sure all leaders are feeling the heat.” This was the speech of António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, this Wednesday at the opening of the climate mini-summit in New York. An intervention in which the Portuguese diplomat was clear: “Humanity has opened the gates of hell.” With that statement, Guterres summarized the latest climate events: the hottest boreal summer in history, extreme storms in the Mediterranean, long-lasting droughts in various parts of the planet, unquenchable fires, historic sea temperatures and catastrophic floods that several reports link to them. climate change. “We must go up a gear and reverse the trend.”
An alert that Guterres has made before a plenary session that has not been able to hear the proposals of China, the United States and the United Arab Emirates, the country that hosts the Climate Summit between November and December. And not because they did not want to, but rather they have been ‘silenced’ by the United Nations, since it only allowed students who were dedicated to climate matters to speak, among whom, for example, is Spain. “We must recover lost trust,” said the international leader. “We can still limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees,” he added.
A figure that is already known will not be met with the measures implemented in recent years. The planet’s temperature is inevitably heading towards 2.8 degrees, Guterres pointed out. “It’s a hot, horrible world,” he warned.
This mini-summit is the previous step to the meeting in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) where world leaders will have to discuss and review their climate plans and cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. A review marked and scheduled in the 2015 Paris Agreement and that the United Nations itself in a recent report made clear “that not enough effort has been made to comply.”
At this time, the deviation from the Paris Agreement requires an immediate cut in emissions of 43% by 2030. “If this is not done, this objective will be unattainable,” say scientific experts. The planet’s temperature is currently 1.2 degrees above pre-industrial times, just three tenths of the limit agreed at COP21 in Paris. “We are going towards 2.8 degrees,” Guterres stressed. «The future of humanity is in our hands. A summit is not going to change anything, but it can generate a dynamic,” he added.
Many noted
Although no major decisions or agreements are expected from this meeting, Guterres, as happens in every climate-related intervention, does not waver when pointing out those responsible for climate inaction. At the opening of the Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt) summit last November he asked to tax the extraordinary profits of the oil companies, months later he demanded that they “account for the big lie” and this Wednesday he pointed it out again. “Some companies have shamefully tried to block the transition to an emissions-free world,” he snapped from the stand.
To counter their power, Guterres called on world leaders to forget about fossil fuels and look toward renewable energy. “The transition is underway, but we are decades behind schedule,” he said. “We must make up for lost time.”
At the last G20 meeting, countries agreed to triple the implementation of renewable energy by 2030. And at the Dubai summit it is hoped that this same objective can be given a boost. During this intervention, Guterres also remembered the countries that are suffering the most from the effects of global warming. “They have the right to be angry,” he said. “More climate justice is needed.”
At the previous climate summit, the meeting at the highest diplomatic level closed with the commitment to create a loss and damage fund for the states most vulnerable to climate change. A point of friction between countries that will once again be the central core of the discussions in Dubai in two months. The Secretary General of the United Nations demanded that the fund be launched and took the opportunity to remember that the most developed countries committed to mobilizing close to 100 billion euros per year until 2020 and that figure was never reached.
Although no major announcements are expected, the work and discussions that will take place in the coming days at the New York headquarters will be the basis for the Dubai COP28 roadmap.
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