The Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), António Guterres, warned this Thursday of the possibility of a “total disaster” if global temperatures rise by 3ºC, and argued that there is a lack of political will to accelerate the fight against climate change.
António Guterres spoke to the France-Presse news agency, before flying to Dubai to attend the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), which begins this Thursday.
“There is an essential difference between phasing out and phasing out, because phasing out can be anything, you never know exactly what it means. Phasing out means that at a certain point it stops,” Guterres began by clarifying.
“Now it cannot stop tomorrow,” he added, explaining that it is necessary for countries to organize and define a “credible” deadline “in accordance with the objective of maintaining the temperature at 1.5 ºC.”
Last Monday, the UN revealed that the world could warm 3ºC more this century, moving away from the commitment made in the Paris Agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, approved in 2015 at COP21.
“The only thing that is still missing is political will,” said the UN Secretary General.
“The COP is important for people to understand that we are still going in a very wrong direction. We are heading, if nothing happens, towards 3 ºC and that will be a total disaster,” he stressed.
António Guterres also recalled that the world has “potential, technologies, capacity and money” to “do whatever is necessary.”
Until December 12, the United Arab Emirates, one of the main oil producers, will host thousands of people from around the world at the so-called climate summit, to discuss climate change and the fight against global warming.
In addition to the Paris Agreement, topics from previous summits on climate change mitigation and adaptation also stand out, in which progress is expected, in addition to the formalization of the “loss and damage” mechanism, approved at last year’s summit in Egypt but It is not yet operational.
Portugal will have, for the first time, an autonomous pavilion (until now it participated as part of the representation of the European Union), where it will host more than three dozen initiatives during the summit.
Source: TSF
