Humanity is facing a new, unprecedented war that is in danger of destroying our future before we have fully understood the risk, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday.
The stark message from Guterres follows a year of global upheaval, with the COVID-19 pandemic causing governments to shut down whole countries for months at a time, while wildfires, hurricanes and powerful storms have scarred the globe.
“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal. Nature always strikes back — and it is already doing so with growing force and fury. Biodiversity is collapsing. One million species are at risk of extinction. Ecosystems are disappearing before our eyes... Human activities are at the root of our descent toward chaos, but that means human action can help to solve it,” he said in a virtual address at Columbia University in New York City.
Photo: Reuters
He listed the human-inflicted wounds on the natural world: the spread of deserts; wetlands lost; forests cut down; oceans overfished and choked with plastic; dying coral reefs; air pollution killing 9 million people a year, more than the current pandemic; and the fact that 75 percent of new and emerging human infectious diseases have, like COVID-19, come from animals.
Although Guterres, like his two predecessors, has frequently spoken on the dangers of the climate crisis, this was his strongest language yet.
The UN was founded 75 years ago at the end of World War II to try to promote world peace after two devastating global conflicts.
Guterres made a deliberate invocation of that original mission, applying it to the climate and biodiversity crises.
“Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century,” he said. “It must be the top, top priority for everyone, everywhere.”
He said future generations would face ruin from our actions today.
“This is an epic policy test, but ultimately this is a moral test... We cannot use [our] resources to lock in policies that burden [future generations] with a mountain of debt on a broken planet,” he said.
He also put inequality firmly at the heart of the problem, warning that the poorest and most vulnerable — even in rich countries — were facing the brunt of the attack.
Greenhouse gas emissions were 62 percent higher than when international climate negotiations began in 1990, he said.
A report from the World Meteorological Organization, published on Wednesday, said that this year is on track to be one of the three warmest years on record globally, despite the cooling effects of the La Nina weather system, while the past decade was the hottest in human history and ocean heat was found to be at record levels.
However, Guterres also struck a note of hope. Many countries, including the biggest emitter, China, the EU, and US president-elect Joe Biden, have adopted targets of reaching net-zero emissions around the middle of the century.
Renewable energy is now cheaper than coal in many regions, and new technologies, such as electric vehicles, are gaining pace.
“I firmly believe that 2021 can be a new kind of leap year — the year of a quantum leap towards carbon neutrality. Sound economic analysis is our ally,” he said.
Guterres called for countries to put a price on carbon emissions, stop investing in fossil fuels and phase out fossil fuel subsidies, stop building new coal power plants, and to shift their fiscal base from taxing incomes to taxing pollution.
He also said governments must act swiftly on the biodiversity crisis, as the UN plans several major conferences next year that would address species destruction, the oceans, food production and cities.
“Next year gives us a wealth of opportunities to stop the plunder and start the healing,” he said.
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