UN chief calls for urgent need to end global heating with cold, hard facts

As a key global warming threshold looks like it would be passed, the Sectetary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres has called for scientists to serve up “cold, hard facts” to push governments into making policies that curb climate change before.

Guterres made the call on Monday where experts and officials from around the world are converging for a week-long meeting in the Swiss Alpine town of Interlaken as they look to finalize the last of seven reports issued by the global body’s panel of top scientists since the Paris climate accord was forged in 2015.

In a video address to delegates, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “could not come at a more pivotal time.”

“Our world is at a crossroads — and our planet is in the crosshairs,” he said. “We are nearing the point of no return; of overshooting the internationally agreed limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) of global warming,” he said.

Agreed in Paris almost eight years ago and measured against average temperatures during pre-industrial times, that threshold has become the yardstick for climate scientists who warn of the dangers of an ever hotter planet.

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Guterres cited recent IPCC reports that showed that while some impacts of global warming are already unavoidable, “it is possible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees with rapid and deep emissions reductions across all sectors of the global economy.” However, some scientists are at variance with the report, noting that the rate at which greenhouse gas is being pumped into the atmosphere makes this limit almost impossible to keep to.

The U.N. chief said the final installment in the IPCC’s sixth reporting cycle otherwise known as the synthesis report for how it brings together insights from six previous papers, should provide governments with “solid, frank, detailed scientific guidance to make the right decisions for people and planet” when they gather for the annual world climate conference in Dubai in November.

Guterres stressed that speeding up the phase-out of fossil fuels is “tough but essential.”

“Show the urgent need to end global heating with cold, hard facts,” he told delegates.

Story was adapted from AP.