"Of the vast forces that have shaped life on Earth over billions of years, humanity is just one small blip on the radar," Guterres said in a speech at New York's American Museum of Natural History.
"But like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, we're having an outsized impact," he warned.
"In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger."
He said that the European Commission's Copernicus Climate Change Service would officially report on Wednesday that May 2024 was the hottest May in recorded history.
"This marks twelve straight months of the hottest months ever," Guterres said.
However he noted optimistically that humans "are also the solution" and called again for concerted global action to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
That target, the most ambitious of the near-decade-old Paris Agreement, is "hanging by a thread," he said.
The UN's World Meteorological Organisation is set to report on Wednesday that there is an 80 percent chance the global annual average temperature exceeds the 1.5 degree limit in at least one of the next five years, he said.
"The battle for 1.5 degrees will be won or lost in the 2020s -- under the watch of leaders today. All depends on the decisions those leaders take -- or fail to take -- especially in the next 18 months," he said.
Signatory countries of the Paris Agreement must submit new greenhouse gas emission reduction targets by early 2025.
Guterres called for humanity to take an "exit ramp off the highway to climate hell," putting a particular target on the fossil fuel industry, which he labeled "Godfathers of climate chaos."
He also denounced advertisers as "enablers" who have helped fossil fuel companies to delay climate action.
"Stop taking on new fossil fuel clients, from today, and set out plans to drop your existing ones," he told the "Mad Men fuelling the madness."
He also urged every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies, as many have done for "products that harm human health -- like tobacco."
The UN chief repeated a call for a tax on fossil fuel companies' profits to finance the fight against global warming, while also mentioning unspecified "solidarity levies" on the aviation and shipping sectors.
Guterres also demanded again that rich countries phase out coal by 2030 and reduce oil and gas consumption by 60 percent by 2035.
Wealthy countries which are historically more responsible for carbon emissions should increase their climate aid to poorer, more at risk countries, he pleaded.
"We cannot accept a future where the rich are protected in air-conditioned bubbles, while the rest of humanity is lashed by lethal weather in unliveable lands," he said.
World will likely temporarily pass 1.5C climate limit by 2028: UN
Geneva (AFP) June 5, 2024 -
Humanity now faces an 80 percent chance that Earth's temperatures will at least temporarily exceed the key 1.5-degree Celsius mark during the next five years, the UN predicted Wednesday.
The 2015 Paris climate accords, which set the ambitious target of limiting the world to a temperature increase of 1.5 C over pre-industrial levels, meant to refer "to long-term temperature increases over decades, not over one to five years", the UN's World Meteorological Organization said.
The report came alongside another by the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service announcing that last month was the hottest May on record, pointing to human-induced climate change -- and spurring UN chief Antonio Guterres to compare humanity's impact on the world to "the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs".
The chance of temporarily exceeding the limit in the next five years ahead has been rising steadily since 2015, when such a chance was estimated to be close to zero, the UN's weather and climate agency noted.
"There is an 80 percent likelihood that the annual average global temperature will temporarily exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for at least one of the next five years," WMO said.
In 2023, the risk of temporarily breaching the limit within five years was estimated at 66 percent.
Already, dramatic climate shifts have begun taking a heavy toll worldwide, fuelling extreme weather events, flooding and drought, while glaciers are rapidly melting away and sea levels are rising.
- 'Record-breaking' path -
"We are on a record-breaking warming path," WMO deputy chief Ko Barrett told reporters in Geneva.
"WMO is sounding the alarm that we will be exceeding the 1.5 C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency."
She added that "we have already temporarily surpassed this level for individual months".
Barrett noted though that temporary breaches "do not mean that the 1.5 C goal is permanently lost because this refers to long-term warming over decades".
"But the trend is alarming and cannot be denied."
Temperature levels are rising, with 2023 by far the hottest year on record, amid warnings that 2024 could be even hotter.
Currently, the WMO predicts that the mean near-surface temperature for each year between 2024 and 2028 will be 1.1-1.9 C above the pre-industrial levels recorded between 1850 and 1900.
- 'Way off track' -
Pointing to repeated monthly temperature records over the past year, the WMO highlighted that already the past 12 months, from June 2023 to May 2024, were "the highest on record".
And it said there was now an 86-percent chance that one of the years between 2024 and 2028 would unseat 2023 as the annual record-holder.
It also said there was a 90-percent likelihood that the mean temperature for 2024-2028 would be higher than that over the past five-year period.
"We are way off track to meet the goals set in the Paris Agreement," Barrett said.
Related Links
Asteroid and Comet Mission News, Science and Technology
| Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters |
| Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters |
