A devastating climate failure – COP 30 must change direction. The United Nations general secretary has deplored the failure to limit global warning to 1.5C and warns that we ‘must change course immediately’. As recently reported in the media, António Guterres has warned that it is now “inevitable” that humanity will overshoot the target set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement, with “devastating consequences” for the world.
The UN says that only 64 countries have submitted new plans to cut carbon, despite all being required to do so ahead of November’s COP30 summit. He said the priority at the COP was to shift direction. Although the UN review does show some progress in curbing carbon emissions over the next decade, the projected fall is not enough to stop temperatures passing its
global target of 1.5c. The report underlines the scale of the task facing world leaders who head to Belém in northern Brazil for the COP30 climate gathering. “Let’s recognise our failure,” he told the Guardian and Amazon-based news organisation Sumaúma. “The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5c in the next few years. And that going above 1.5c has devastating
consequences. Some of these devastating consequences are tipping points, be it in the Amazon, be it in Greenland, or western Antarctica or the coral reefs.”
The UN head continued: “It is absolutely indispensable to change course in order to make sure that the overshoot is as short as possible and as low in intensity as possible to avoid tipping points like the Amazon. We don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don’t change course and if we don’t make a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible.”
In 2018, scientists outlined the massive benefits to the world of keeping the rise under 1.5c as compared to allowing them to rise to 2c. UN scientists say that passing 1.5c (which happened last year) include more frequent and intense heatwaves and storms, increased damage to coral reefs and growing threats to human health and livelihoods.
As António Guterres was issuing his warning the people of Haiti, and Jamaica wer reeling from the category 5 storm, one of the most severe Atlantic hurricanes in history. The ‘storm of the century’ is what climate change does – it makes hurricanes more severe as oceans get warmer.
The 30th UN climate change conference takes place from 6-21November where the fate of nations and their peoples will depend on its outcome. If it fails, the World will suffer. The warnings have never been clearer.