Climate Crisis a code red for humanity

Oct 31, 2021 News

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…time has passed for diplomatic niceties — UN SG

Kaieteur News – The 26th United Nations Conference of Parties (COP-26) opens today in Glasgow, Scotland, with Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, using the opportunity on the eve of the premier global Climate Change confab, to scold particularly those in the developed world in addition to private business with regard their failed commitments over the years.

Guterrres in a last minute appeal, via a public missive yesterday, said bluntly, “the time has passed for diplomatic niceties.”
According to the UN Secretary General, “If governments – especially G20 governments – do not stand up and lead this effort, we are headed for terrible human suffering.”
He was adamant, all countries need to realise that the old, carbon-burning model of development is a death sentence for their economies and our planet.
To this end, he reiterated, “we need decarbonisation now, across every sector in every country; we need to shift subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and tax pollution, not people.”
According to Guterres, it is time “to put a price on carbon, and channel that back towards (into) resilient infrastructures and jobs.”
He reminded too of the need to phase-out the use of coal by 2030 in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and 2040 in all others.

Increasing numbers of governments have pledged to stop financing coal and, according to Gutterrres, “private finance needs to do the same, urgently.”
People, he said, rightly expect their governments to lead but also cautioned “we all have a responsibility to safeguard our collective future.”
To this end, Guterres in his appeal said private businesses too need to reduce their climate impact, and fully and credibly align their operations and financial flows to a net-zero future.
“No more excuses; no more green washing,” a clear reference to oil company’s position as it relates to the impact of fossil fuel on the environment and its relation to climate change.Calling the ‘climate crisis’ a code red for humanity, Guterres opined that World Leaders will soon be put to the test at the UN Climate Conference – known as COP26 – in Glasgow and that “their actions – or inactions – will show their seriousness about addressing this planetary emergency.”
Appealing for a change in the way humanity impacts on the climate through its fossil fuel based activities, Guterres said investors—public and private alike—“should join front runners like the net-zero asset owners alliance, and the UN’s own pension fund, which met its 2021 carbon reduction investment objectives ahead of time and above its target, with a 32 percent reduction this year.”
The UN Secretary General used the occasion to also call on public and multilateral development banks to significantly increase their climate portfolios and intensify their efforts to help countries transition to net-zero, resilient economies.
Importantly, he was adamant, “the developed world must urgently meet its commitment of at least $100 billion in annual climate finance for developing countries.”
Donors and multilateral development banks, he said, “need to allocate at least half their climate finance towards adaptation and resilience.”
The warning signs are hard to miss, Guterres said as he impressed and elucidated by pointing to the fact, “temperatures everywhere are reaching new highs; biodiversity is reaching new lows; oceans are warming, acidifying, and choking with plastic waste. Increasing temperatures will make vast stretches of our planet dead zones for humanity by century’s end.”
Drawing reference to respected medical journal ‘The Lancet,’ he noted its observation which remarked climate change as the “defining narrative of human health” in the years to come — a crisis defined by widespread hunger, respiratory illness, deadly disasters and infectious disease outbreaks that could be even worse than COVID-19.
Guterres in his appeal was unwavering, “despite these alarm bells ringing at fever pitch, we see new evidence in the latest UN reports that governments’ actions so far simply do not add up to what is so desperately needed.”
Recent new announcements for climate action are welcome and critical — but even so, “our world is on track for calamitous global temperature rises well above 2 degrees Celsius.”
According to the Secretary General, this is a far cry from the 1.5-degree Celsius target to which the world agreed under the Paris Agreement – a target that science tells us is the only sustainable pathway for our world.
“This target is entirely achievable, if we can reduce global emissions by 45 percent compared to 2010 levels, this decade, if we can achieve global net-zero by 2050, and if world leaders arrive in Glasgow with bold, ambitious, and verifiable 2030 targets, and new, concrete policies to reverse this disaster.”
To this end, Guterres—a day before the opening of COP 26—in his clarion call said, “G20 leaders – in particular – need to deliver.”

 

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