UN head warns of encroaching 'point of no return' on climate change
Secretary-General Guterres urges ‘taxing pollution instead of people’
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns the world is reaching “the point of no return” on climate change. (U.S. Government)
By Ted Cox
The head of the United Nations warned Sunday that the world is reaching “the point of no return” on climate change and “what is still lacking is political will” to make necessary shifts on fossil fuels.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made the comments on the eve of the opening of a two-week international climate conference in Madrid.
According to Politico, Guterres warned, “The point of no return is no longer over the horizon. It is in sight and hurtling toward us.”
Calling the global response to decades of increasing temperatures, melting polar icecaps, and worsening weather disasters “utterly inadequate,” Guterres said, “What is still lacking is political will. Political will to put a price on carbon. Political will to stop subsidies on fossil fuels. Political will to stop building coal power plants from 2020 onwards. Political will to shift taxation from income to carbon. Taxing pollution instead of people.”
Just last week, the UN released a new report calling for an accelerated response in limiting greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said, “We need to catch up on the years in which we procrastinated.”
That report also lauded worldwide youth protests, launched last year by teenage Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, like the Illinois Youth Climate Strike protests. They’ve made passage of the Illinois Clean Energy Jobs Act a top priority, and they have another “school strike” protest set for 11 a.m. Friday in Chicago at the iconic Crown Fountain in Millennium Park. Guterres echoed that praise for youth activists Sunday.
Illinois Youth Climate Strike plans another protest in Chicago on Friday. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
Delegates from almost 200 countries are expected at the conference, which is charged with completing a rules-making process begun in 2015 with the Paris Agreement on climate change. According to Politico, “Countries agreed in Paris four years ago to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), ideally 1.5C (2.7F) by the end of the century compared with pre-industrial times. Already, average temperatures have increased by about 1C, leaving little room for the more ambitious target to be met.”
The Associated Press reported that the conference agenda includes “finalizing rules on global carbon markets and agreeing how poor countries should be compensated for destruction largely caused by emissions from rich nations.” That could include “proposals to create a worldwide market for emissions permits,” in effect “putting a price on carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas — and gradually reducing the available permits,” which would spur countries to cut emissions and shift to renewable energy.
Donald Trump, a frequent climate-change denier, announced early in his presidency that he’d be withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement, and a month ago he began the yearlong formal process of pulling out of the pact.
Guterres, the former prime minister of Portugal, said about 70 countries have already agreed to halt greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050, “but we also see clearly that the world’s largest emitters are not pulling their weight. And without them, our goal is unreachable.”
About 50 heads of state are expected to attend the opening of the climate conference Monday, but Trump will not be one of them. Politico noted that “some of the world’s largest carbon emitters — the United States, China, and India — will be represented by ministers or lower-level officials.” The U.S. delegation will be led by Marcia Bernicat, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leading a separate delegation of Democratic lawmakers.
According to the AP, since the first UN diplomatic conference on climate change, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the level of carbon dioxide in the air has risen 15 percent, carbon-dioxide emissions have jumped 63 percent, and the global average temperature has risen more than a degree Fahrenheit, which translates to more than a half-degree Celsius. As a result, arctic sea ice has declined 17 percent, and the global sea level has risen by more than 3 inches.