UNITED NATIONS, Mar 11 (APP): United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that the world was far off the path it needs to be on to reach climate goals agreed by the international community to keep global average temperatures well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
“We are currently way off track to meeting either the 1.5-degree or 2-degree targets that the Paris Agreement calls for,” the secretary general said.
His warning came in the foreword to a UN climate report, which confirms that 2019 was the second-warmest year on record, topped only by 2016.
The wide-ranging report, released on Tuesday, shows that climate change is having a major effect on all aspects of the environment, as well as on the health and wellbeing of the global population.
The report, ‘The WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2019’, which is led by the UN weather agency (World Meteorological Organization), contains data from an extensive network of partners.
WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said “it was a matter of time” before the 2019 record of being second-warmest year is broken.
“Given that greenhouse gas levels continue to increase, the warming will continue. A recent decadal forecast indicates that a new annual global temperature record is likely in the next five years,” the UN weather agency chief said.
“We have no time to lose if we are to avert climate catastrophe,” Guterres said at the launch of the “State of the Climate” report.
The UN chief said the novel coronavirus and climate change were both “very serious problems” that must “be defeated.”
But, he said, “it is important that all the attention that needs to be given to fight this disease does not distract us from the need to defeat climate change.”
Guterres said the reduction in emissions due to the virus should not be overestimated, adding: “We will not fight climate change with a virus.”
Several heat records have been broken in recent years and decades: the report confirms that 2019 was the second warmest year on record, and 2010-2019 was the warmest decade on record. Since the 1980s, each successive decade has been warmer than any preceding decade since 1850.
