Dear friends of the planet,On June is World Environment Day. It is also the day that the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service officially reports May 2024 as the hottest May in recorded history. This marks twelve straight months of the hottest months ever. For the past year, every turn of the calendar has turned up the heat. Our planet is trying to tell us something. But we don’t seem to be listening.
Dear Friends, The American Museum of Natural History is the ideal place to make the point. This great Museum tells the amazing story of our natural world. Of the vast forces that have shaped life on earth over billions of years. Humanity is just one small blip on the radar. But like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, we’re having an outsized impact. In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs.
We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger. But we are also the solution. So, dear friends, We are at a moment of truth. The truth is … almost ten years since the Paris Agreement was adopted, the target of limiting long-term global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is hanging by a thread.
The truth is … the world is spewing emissions so fast that by 2030, a far higher temperature rise would be all but guaranteed. Brand new data from leading climate scientists released today show the remaining carbon budget to limit long-term warming to 1.5 degrees is now around 200 billion tonnes.
That is the maximum amount of carbon dioxide that the earth’s atmosphere can take if we are to have a fighting chance of staying within the limit. The truth is… we are burning through the budget at reckless speed – spewing out around 40 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
We can all do the math. At this rate, the entire carbon budget will be busted before 2030.
The truth is … global emissions need to fall nine per cent every year until 2030 to keep the 1.5 degree limit alive. But they are heading in the wrong direction. Last year they rose by one per cent. The truth is… we already face incursions into 1.5-degree territory.
The World Meteorological Organisation reports today that there is an eighty per cent chance the global annual average temperature will exceed the 1.5 degree limit in at least one of the next five years. In 2015, the chance of such a breach was near zero. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance that the average temperature for the entire next five-year period will be 1.5 degrees higher than pre-industrial times.
We are playing Russian roulette with our planet. We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell. And the truth is… we have control of the wheel. The 1.5 degree limit is still just about possible. Let’s remember – it’s a limit for the long-term – measured over decades, not months or years. So, stepping over the threshold 1.5 for a short time does not mean the long-term goal is shot. It means we need to fight harder. Now. The truth is… 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 eighteen months. It’s climate crunch time.
The need for action is unprecedented but so is the opportunity – not just to deliver on climate, but on economic prosperity and sustainable development. Climate action cannot be captive to geo-political divisions. So, as the world meets in Bonn for climate talks, and gears up for the G7 and G20 Summits, the United Nations General Assembly, and COP29, we need maximum ambition, maximum acceleration, maximum cooperation – in a word maximum action.
So dear friends, Why all this fuss about 1.5 degrees? Because our planet is a mass of complex, connected systems. And every fraction of a degree of global heating counts. The difference between 1.5 and two degrees could be the difference between extinction and survival for some small island states and coastal communities. The difference between minimizing climate chaos or crossing dangerous tipping points. 1.5 degrees is not a target. It is not a goal. It is a physical limit.
Scientists have alerted us that temperatures rising higher would likely mean: The collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet with catastrophic sea level rise; The destruction of tropical coral reef systems and the livelihoods of 300 million people; The collapse of the Labrador Sea Current that would further disrupt weather patterns in Europe; And widespread permafrost melt that would release devastating levels of methane, one of the most potent heat-trapping gasses.
Even today, we’re pushing planetary boundaries to the brink – shattering global temperature records and reaping the whirlwind. And it is a travesty of climate justice that those least responsible for the crisis are hardest hit: the poorest people; the most vulnerable countries; Indigenous Peoples; women
and girls.
The richest one per cent emit as much as two-thirds of humanity. And extreme events turbocharged by climate chaos are piling up: Destroying lives, pummelling economies, and hammering health; Wrecking sustainable development; forcing people from their homes; and rocking the foundations of peace and security – as people are displaced and vital resources depleted.
Already this year, a brutal heatwave has baked Asia with record temperatures – shrivelling crops, closing schools, and killing people. Cities from New Delhi, to Bamako, to Mexico City are scorching. Here in the US, savage storms have destroyed communities and lives. We’ve seen drought disasters declared across southern Africa; Extreme rains flood the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa and Brazil; And a mass global coral bleaching caused by unprecedented ocean temperatures, soaring past the worst predictions of scientists. The cost of all this chaos is hitting people where it hurts: From supply-chains severed, to rising prices, mounting food insecurity, and uninsurable homes and businesses.
That bill will keep growing. Even if emissions hit zero tomorrow, a recent study found that climate chaos will still cost at least $38 trillion a year by 2050. Climate change is the mother of all stealth taxes paid by everyday people and vulnerable countries and communities. Meanwhile, the Godfathers of climate chaos – the fossil fuel industry – rake in record profits and feast off trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies. Dear friends, We have what we need to save ourselves. Our forests, our wetlands, and our oceans absorb carbon from the atmosphere. They are vital to keeping 1.5 alive, or pulling us back if we do overshoot that limit. We must protect them. And we have the technologies we need to slash emissions.
Renewables are booming as costs plummet and governments realise the benefits of cleaner air, good jobs, energy security, and increased access to power. Onshore wind and solar are the cheapest source of new electricity in most of the world – and have been for years. Renewables already make up thirty percent of the world’s electricity supply. And clean energy investments reached a record high last year – almost doubling in the last ten [years].
Wind and solar are now growing faster than any electricity source in history. Economic logic makes the end of the fossil fuel age inevitable. The only questions are: Will that end come in time? And will the transition be just? Dear friends, We must ensure the answer to both questions is: yes. And we must secure the safest possible future for people and planet. That means taking urgent action, particularly over the next eighteen months: To slash emissions; To protect people and nature from climate extremes; To boost climate finance; And to clamp down on the fossil fuel industry.
Let me take each element in turn. First, huge cuts in emissions. Led by the huge emitters.
This is the text of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s speech on World Environment Day. Antonio Guterres is Secretary-General
of the United Nations.
