Humanity's climate impact equal to dinosaur-ending meteor: UN chief
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The European Commission's Copernicus Climate Change Service will formally publish on Wednesday that May 2024 was the warmest May in recorded history.
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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres gestures during an interview at the COP26 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow on November 11, 2021. (AP)
Humanity's part in the planet's damaging warming is equivalent to the meteor that took out the dinosaurs, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday, asking for immediate action, including a ban on fossil fuel advertising.
At New York's American Museum of Natural History, Guterres stated that "of the vast forces that have shaped life on Earth over billions of years, humanity is just one small blip on the radar," warning that just like a meteor that "wiped out the dinosaurs, we're having an outsized impact."
"In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger," Guterres stated.
He stated that the European Commission's Copernicus Climate Change Service will formally publish on Wednesday that May 2024 was the warmest May in recorded history, reiterating the need for a collective global effort to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
That aim, the most ambitious of the almost decade-old Paris Agreement, is "hanging by a thread," he stated.
The UN's World Meteorological Organization is expected to declare on Wednesday that there is an 80% possibility that the global annual average temperature will reach 1.5 degrees Celsius in at least one of the next five years, he added.
According to Guterres, "The battle for 1.5 degrees will be won or lost in the 2020s -- under the watch of leaders today. All depends on the decisions those leaders take -- or fail to take -- especially in the next 18 months."
The godfathers of climate chaos
Signatory nations to the Paris Agreement must submit updated greenhouse gas reduction objectives by early 2025. Guterres urged mankind to take an "exit ramp off the highway to climate hell," specifically targeting the fossil fuel sector, which he dubbed the "godfathers of climate chaos."
He also slammed advertising as "enablers" who have aided fossil fuel firms in delaying climate action.
Addressing the "mad men fuelling the madness," he urged them to plan to drop fossil fuel clients and end advertisements from fossil fuel businesses, as they have done for "products that harm human health -- like tobacco."
He reiterated his proposal for a tax on fossil fuel profits to fund the battle against climate change, while also citing vague "solidarity levies" on the aviation and shipping industries.
Guterres also asked that affluent nations phase out coal by 2030 and cut oil and gas usage by 60% by 2035, urging wealthy nations to provide climate aid to more vulnerable, less affluent ones.
"We cannot accept a future where the rich are protected in air-conditioned bubbles, while the rest of humanity is lashed by lethal weather in unliveable lands."
