Outgoing UN chief makes final climate push at New York summit
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Outgoing UN chief Antonio Guterres, whose tenure ends on Dec 31, called on countries to lift their emissions cutting targets and release concrete plans to quit fossil fuels.
PHOTO: AFP
- Outgoing UN chief Antonio Guterres called renewable energy "unstoppable" and urged countries to set clear plans to quit fossil fuels, highlighting the urgent need to cut emissions and avoid climate catastrophe.
- Germany issued a road map to quit fossil fuels, joining France and the Netherlands, while global leaders at the summit discussed balancing climate goals with economic and social realities ahead of COP31.
- Guterres stressed increasing climate financing for developing countries and expanding early warning systems by 2027, with a focus on electrification and climate justice for vulnerable nations like Nepal.
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UNITED NATIONS, United States – Outgoing UN chief Antonio Guterres on Sept 23 hailed the “unstoppable” rise of renewable energy and urged countries to develop firm plans to quit fossil fuels in his final climate meeting at the world organisation’s New York headquarters.
Speaking a day after denouncing “Big Oil” for treating the atmosphere like an “open sewer”, the 77-year-old secretary-general used his opening speech to sound a note of hope.
“Renewables are the cheapest, fastest and most secure source of new electricity almost everywhere,” he said. “Clean energy has gone from alternative to unstoppable.”
He called on countries to lift their emissions cutting targets and release concrete plans to quit fossil fuels – a cause given a boost by Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, which issued its road map hours before Guterres’ swansong address as a summit convener.
Germany is the third country to do so, after France and the Netherlands.
“We are the first generation with the tools to end the fossil fuel age – and the last who can avert climate catastrophe,” Guterres concluded.
The former Portuguese prime minister made climate change a defining issue of his nine-year tenure, which ends on Dec 31, and was hailed by Rachel Cleetus of the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists as “an extraordinary climate champion” for consistently elevating the voices of the most vulnerable.
The stakes are clearer than ever as the impacts of climate change surge around the world – from heatwaves and wildfires in Europe to catastrophic flooding in Nepal and Tibet triggered by a glacier collapse.
Extreme weather events are set to worsen, with a strengthening El Nino cycle that has already tied a record for intensity months from its peak.
And the world is set to shoot past – at least temporarily – 1.5 deg C of warming. Scientists say temperature increases above that level will bring on worse climate-linked catastrophes.
Turkey tempers expectations
Guterres’s remarks at the summit, called High-level Event on Climate Action and the Just Transition, were followed by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The two countries are co-hosting COP31 climate talks in Antalya in November in an unusual arrangement, with Australia running the talks but Turkey holding the event and rallying support for voluntary pledges.
“Action is not optional,” said Albanese, touting the fact that during the height of the last Australian summer, half of the power for the grid came from renewables.
Yet, his climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, is travelling to India and Saudi Arabia this week for talks on strengthening Australia’s oil supplies.
Erdogan followed and appeared to temper expectations about the degree of ambition at COP31.
“Any proposal that fails to reconcile our climate objectives with social and economic realities will be doomed to fail,” he said.
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband pledged an investment of £330 million (S$559.2 million) in the Global Environment Facility, a financial mechanism to support global goals for nature, climate and pollution.
“It’s a little disappointing that there weren’t more commitments and more announcements here,” Cosima Cassel of climate change think-tank E3G told AFP, though she praised Germany’s road map.
Emissions cuts, financing, electrification
Guterres asked leaders to accelerate the greening of their economies and mobilise climate financing for developing countries, and said life-saving early warning systems must extend to every person on earth by 2027.
Momentum is also gathering for electrification: switching combustion-based systems, like in heating and vehicles, to electricity.
Turkey has advanced a “35x35“ target to increase electricity’s share of global energy consumption to 35 per cent by 2035. However, it has not specified that the electricity should be generated by renewables, which are key to tackling climate change.
Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal of Nepal, where more than 1,400 have died and thousands more remain missing after a devastating Aug 26 flood, said “such tragedies are not isolated events; they are symptoms of global crisis, a crisis Nepal did not create”.
“At this point, we’re asking for what we call climate justice,” he said. AFP