Warning of the risks of \u201crunaway\u201d global warming, U.N. Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres on Monday called on global leaders to rein in climate change faster.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change,\u201d Guterres said at U.N. headquarters in New York.<\/p>\n
\u201cClimate change is the defining issue of our time, and we are at a defining moment,\u201d he said. \u201cScientists have been telling us for decades. Over and over again. Far too many leaders have refused to listen.\u201d<\/p>\n
His remarks came with countries around the world far short of meeting the goals they set for themselves under the 2015 Paris accord to reduce the emissions that have warmed the planet during the last century. The next round of climate negotiations is scheduled for this year in Poland.<\/p>\n
One of the big tests at those talks, which start Dec. 3 in Katowice, will be whether countries, especially industrialized countries that produce a large share of global emissions, will set higher targets for reducing their emissions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe time has come for our leaders to show they care about the people whose fate they hold in their hands,\u201d Guterres said, without taking questions from reporters. \u201cWe need to rapidly shift away from our dependence on fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guterres\u2019 speech came days before a high-level climate meeting in San Francisco, spearheaded by Gov. Jerry Brown of California, meant to demonstrate what businesses and local leaders have done to tackle climate change.<\/p>\n
The U.N. chief seems to be taking a page from Brown\u2019s playbook. He, too, is looking beyond national leaders to make a difference. He has invited heads of industry and city government leaders to his September 2019 climate change forum in an apparent effort to increase pressure on national governments.<\/p>\n
The Paris Agreement aims to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels in order to avoid what scientists call the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.<\/p>\n
But few countries are even close to meeting the targets they set under the Paris pact. And an assessment by the U.N. found that country targets so far would achieve only one-third of the global target.<\/p>\n
Guterres sought to make the case that a shift away from fossil fuels like oil and coal would create jobs and bolster economies. Rebutting critics who argue that such a shift would be costly, he called that idea \u201chogwash.\u201d<\/p>\n
He cited the steps private companies are taking to wean themselves away from polluting fossil fuels \u2014 including a hat tip to the insurance company Allianz, which has promised to stop insuring coal fired power plants \u2014 though he said such actions are plainly insufficient.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are all important strides,\u201d Guterres said. \u201cBut they are not enough. The transition to a cleaner, greener future needs to speed up.\u201d<\/p>\n
He warned that governments were not meeting their Paris Agreement commitments and goaded world leaders to step up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we still lack, even after the Paris Agreement, is leadership and the ambition to do what is needed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Warning of the risks of \u201crunaway\u201d global warming, U.N. Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres on Monday called on global leaders to rein in climate change faster. \u201cIf we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change,\u201d Guterres said at U.N. headquarters in New York. \u201cClimate change is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41804,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41805,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41803\/revisions\/41805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}