SULAIMANI (ESTA) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told leaders that failure at a conference on global warming would mean they should have to come back with improved pledges every year rather than according to the current 5-year timetable.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson kicked off the summit portion of the U.N. conference on Monday, which is aimed at forging an agreement to curb carbon emissions fast enough to keep global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) below pre-industrial levels.
The world has already warmed 1.1°C. Current projections based on planned emissions cuts over the next decade are for it to hit 2.7°C by the year 2100.
Johnson opened the summit by dramatically saying the world is essentially strapped to a “doomsday device”.
Johnson suggested that living on an ever-warming Earth was like fictional secret agent James Bond being strapped to a bomb that is capable of destroying the planet.
“A red digital clock ticks down remorselessly to a detonation that will end human life as we know it – and we are roughly [in] the same position, my fellow global leaders, as James Bond today. Except that the tragedy is this is not a movie, and the doomsday device is real.”
The mood only got darker when United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres followed Johnson’s speech.
“We are digging our own graves,” Guterres said. “Our planet is changing before our eyes – from the ocean depths to mountaintops, from melting glaciers to relentless extreme weather events.”
“If commitments fall short at the end of this COP, countries must revisit their national climate plans and policies – not every five years [but] every year and every moment,” he added.
He said there was often “a deficit of credibility and a surplus of confusion over emissions reductions and net zero targets”.
He added that the United Nations was setting up an expert group to measure and analyze net zero commitments of non-state actors.
U.S. President Joe Biden opted for a more hopeful tone, saying there is an “incredible opportunity” behind the “growing catastrophe” of global warming and urging world leaders to meet the challenge.
He pushed against criticism that transforming economies to reduce greenhouse gases and reliance on fossil fuels will undermine employment.
Electrifying transport, and building solar panel and wind turbine networks, creates “good, paying union jobs for American workers” whereas continuing down the same path is already causing economic damage, he said.
“We’re standing at an inflection point in world history,” Biden observed, citing the proliferation of wildfires, droughts and other climate-related disasters.
Biden also spoke about the long-term US strategy, which his administration released Monday, to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Filed in compliance with the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the plan paints a picture of a country increasingly reliant on wind, solar and other clean energies.
“None of us can escape the worst that is yet to come if we fail to seize this moment,” he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron took to the stage after Biden spoke and called for a unified effort to curb climate change based on three values: ambition, solidarity and trust.
He urged the world’s “largest emitters” to boost their plans to slash carbon pollution during the crunch two-week summit.
“The key over the next 15 days at this COP is that the largest emitters, whose national strategies do not align with our objective of 1.5° Celsius of warming, to raise their ambition … that’s the only way of making our strategy credible again,” Macron told world leaders in Glasgow.
