Climate change: António Guterres appeals to world leaders – ‘Don’t drown the world’

The Secretary General of the UN called today the leaders of the planet, which is affected by the climate changeto act to “lower the temperature” and avoid “drowning” the world.

“I have just returned from Pakistan, where I had a glimpse of the future. A future of permanent and ubiquitous chaos on an unimaginable scale,” said Mr Antonio Guterress during a press conference a few days before the arrival in New York of dozens of heads of state and government for the United Nations General Assembly.

“What is happening in Pakistan proves it the inadequacy of the global response to the climate crisis, as well as the betrayal and injustice at the heart of this crisis.”

“My message to the world leaders who will gather here is clear: turn the temperature down now. Don’t flood the world today. Don’t drown him tomorrow“, he insisted, denouncing “decades of intransigence by those who emit large amounts of greenhouse gases” for which “the most vulnerable pay the price”, especially the Group of Twenty (G20).

“If a third of the G20 countries were under water today, as they may be tomorrow, they might have an easier time reducing their emissions drastically.”

Guterres also accused fossil fuel companies of “killing the planet to accumulate as much as possible.”

Beyond climate change, the secretary-general expressed concern about the divisions of the international community.

“Geostrategic divisions have never been so important since at least the Cold War,” he said.which paralyzes the global response to the challenges” which we face in a world “ravaged by war and climate chaos, wounded by hatred, full of shame for poverty and inequalities”.

“The solidarity we had imagined with the Charter of the United Nations has been swallowed by the toxicity of nationalism and selfishness,” he underlined according to the Athens News Agency.