The UN chief says the “free-for-all” of fossil fuels must end

By Andreea Dibo, Health & Environment, The Pawprint

UN Secretary, Antonio Guterres stated that, “The impacts of climate change are heading into uncharted territories of destruction.” The World Meteorological Organization reports warn that the world is “going in the wrong direction” with the topic of climate change. The atmosphere concentrations of greenhouse gasses continue to grow and global leaders are falling behind to implement measures to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. According to the United in Science, our “Earth is inching closer to dangerous climate tipping points.” Due to the cause, already very heavy weather events have become more frequent and much more intense.

In other words, there’s a potential we might cross the 1.5C warming barrier in the next five years. Scientists predict the annual average could be anywhere between 1.1C and 1.7C warmer by the year of 2026.

“Heatwaves in Europe. Colossal floods in Pakistan …There is nothing natural about the new scale of these disasters, the current fossil fuel free-for-all must end now. It is a recipe for permanent climate chaos and suffering.” Guterres stated.

According to scientific data, the last seven years have been the warmest on record, and one of the next five years will break records for heat. Preliminary estimates, worldwide Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions in the first half of this year were 1.2% higher than they were in the corresponding period of 2019. To be exact, in 2019 reached 36.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions compared to this year, 2022 which increased greatly to 421 parts per million carbon dioxide emissions in May.

Not only has things gone bad on land but also in the oceans. As stated by the UN Environment Programme and UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the ocean’s current is moving at its slowest pace within 1,000 years while transporting heat to the northern hemisphere. From all this, it’s caused more extreme weather to happen and plays with the weather patterns. Humans are to blame for these issues as people have started to brush off the fact that our world is in serious danger and will continue to get worse if we don’t step up and help.

Studies cautioned that “tipping points” in the climate system cannot be completely ruled out as global warming progresses. Tipping points include the drying up of the Amazon rainforest and the melting of the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

The risk of increased extreme weather brought on by climate change is already being addressed by many countries, and statistics indicate that the number of people killed from natural catastrophes has decreased recently. However, it is anticipated that climate-related catastrophes will cost an increasing amount of money.

The World Meteorological Organization has pledged to protect every individual on Earth with an early warning system within the next five years in order to aid communities in surviving.