The UN opens a climate summit urgently: "We are running out of time"

[Akrapovic]

The UN chief, António Guterres, opened the Climate Action Summit on Monday with a message of urgency, but also of hope: "We are running out of time, but it is not too late."

“The weather emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win. The climate crisis is caused by us and the solutions must come from us. We have the tools: technology is on our side, ”Guterres said in a speech to dozens of international leaders.

The Secretary General of the United Nations insisted that this Monday's meeting is not a Summit of speeches or negotiations, but a meeting for "action" that must show concrete commitments.
The Climate Action Summit is expected to involve some 60 heads of state and government, which together with local and regional authorities and business managers will present new plans that they have developed individually or in coalitions.

The main absent from the appointment is the president of the United States, Donald Trump, a skeptic of climate change and who has decided to take his country out of the Paris Agreement.

“My generation has failed in its responsibility to protect our planet. That must change, ”said Guterres in the first intervention of the Summit, in which he praised the mobilization of young people in the streets.

“Young people are offering solutions, insisting on responsibility, demanding urgent actions. They do the right thing, ”he insisted.

The UN Secretary General noted the recent natural disasters in several countries such as Bahamas and the record temperatures that are recorded globally as a preview of the future to come if there is no change of course.
“Nature is angry. And we deceive ourselves if we believe that we can deceive nature, because nature always counterattacks. Throughout the world, nature is returning the blow with fury, ”he said.

Guterres admitted that the response to climate change requires "fundamental transformations" in all aspects of society, changes that will have costs, but insisted that the greatest cost is "to do nothing."

The Portuguese diplomat focused especially on the need to end fossil fuel subsidies and the importance of stopping building more and more coal plants.

"It's time to move taxes on carbon wages and tax pollution, not people," he said.

Guterres also urged to meet the objectives of reducing emissions by 45% by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, in order to limit the temperature rise to a maximum of 1.5 degrees by the end of the century. centigrade