The world is losing a war against climate change as the world heats up faster than expected, requiring nations to initiate drastic cuts in carbon emissions beginning in 2020, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned participants at the 25th global climate conference in Madrid on Wednesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th December, 2019) The world is losing a war against climate change as the world heats up faster than expected, requiring nations to initiate drastic cuts in carbon emissions beginning in 2020, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned participants at the 25th global climate conference in Madrid on Wednesday."The world is getting hotter and more dangerous than we ever sought possible," Guterres said. "We are still a long way from our objective of a carbon neutral world by 2050 so we can limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius."
Guterres avoided apocalyptic rhetoric used by many climate change activists, who claim global warming threatens life on Earth with extinction.
Instead, the UN secretary-general injected a note of optimism into his speech.
"The shift from the gray to the green economy is on. It is gathering pace," Guterres said. "I am deeply encouraged by this growth. It shows the private sector and private capital are now moving at scale."
Guterres marked 2020 as the year to begin moving toward a zero carbon economy and outlined a series of steps needed to achieve that goal, including a cut in greenhouse gases by 45 percent from 2010 levels in the next ten years.
Guterres also implored the world's biggest carbon emitters - without mentioning the United States - to offer more ambitious carbon-cutting commitments beginning in 2020.
Finally, he called on nations to begin taxing carbon emissions.
"If we switch taxation from incomes to carbon, we will tax pollution not people," Guterres said.
President Donald Trump, a climate change skeptic, withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, calling the accord an attempt to transfer US wealth to the rest of the world while at the same time hobbling the US economy.
