Every world leader must immediately declare a “state of climate emergency” or face “catastrophic” results, U.N. chief Antonio Guterres warned Saturday.
Speaking at the opening of the Climate Ambition summit, held online to mark five years since the Paris Agreement, the Portuguese socialist warned nations’ current commitments were “far from enough” and were plainly unacceptable to the globalist body.
Around 70 heads of state and government took part in the meeting, which was organised by the UK, U.N. and France. They outlined broad new pledges and commitments to curb carbon but gave very little – if any – detail as to how that would be achieved.
“If we don’t change course, we may be headed for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than 3.0 degrees this century,” Guterres said.
Guterres said G20 nations were spending 50 percent more in their coronavirus rescue packages on sectors linked to fossil fuels than to low-carbon energy.
“This is unacceptable. We cannot use these resources to lock in policies that burden future generations with a mountain of debt on a broken planet,” he said via video-link, returning to a theme he expressed in the first week of December:
Guterres urged countries that had already announced net-zero targets to make good on their promises and to accelerate emissions cuts in line with the science.
“Every country, city, financial institution and company needs to adopt plans to reach net zero emissions by 2050 — and start executing them now, including by providing clear short-term targets,” he added.
One area that yielded little progress at the meeting was the question of finance. Rich countries had promised to mobilise $100bn a year from 2020 under the Paris Agreement – but the commitments on cash have largely been ignored.
Guterres has already said he awaits Joe Biden in the White House to provide U.S. taxpayer funds to remedy that cash shortfall.
Kamala Harris agrees and is literally counting the days until Joe Biden leads the U.S. back into the agreement.
Saturday’s warning of impending climate doom came just over a week after Guterres issued a similar forecast, as Breitbart News reported.
On that occasion he said nature is determined to destroy humanity through flood, famine, fire, and pestilence, prophesizing the time has come for us to repent and mend our ways through a great climate and economic reset.