<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/05/antonio-guterres-un-chief-fossil-fuels-advertising>
"Fossil-fuel companies are the “godfathers of climate chaos” and should be
banned in every country from advertising akin to restrictions on big tobacco,
the secretary general of the United Nations has said while delivering dire new
scientific warnings of global heating.
In a major speech in New York on Wednesday, António Guterres called on news and
tech media to stop enabling “planetary destruction” by taking fossil-fuel
advertising money while warning the world faces “climate crunch time” in its
faltering attempts to stem the crisis.
“Many governments restrict or prohibit advertising for products that harm human
health, like tobacco,” he said. “I urge every country to ban advertising from
fossil-fuel companies. And I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking
fossil-fuel advertising.”
In his speech, Guterres announced new data from the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) showing there is an 80% chance the planet will breach 1.5C
(2.7F) in warming above pre-industrial times in at least one of the next five
calendar years. The past 12 months have already breached this level, with the
average global temperature 1.63C (2.9F) higher than the pre-industrial average
from June 2023 to May of this year, following a string of months with
record-breaking heat, according to the European Union’s Copernicus monitoring
system.
Governments agreed in the 2015 Paris climate pact to restrain the global
temperatures rise to 1.5C to avoid cascading heatwaves, floods, droughts and
other ruinous impacts, and while a single year beyond this limit does not mean
the target has been lost, scientists widely expect this to happen in the coming
decade.
According to the WMO, there is a roughly 50-50 chance that the period of 2024
to 2028 will average above 1.5C in warming, globally. “We are playing Russian
roulette with our planet,” Guterres, known for his strident language on the
climate crisis, told an audience underneath a suspended 94ft model of a blue
whale at the American Museum of Natural History. “We need an exit ramp off the
highway to climate hell.”
In a nod to the venue of his speech, Guterres said that “like the meteor that
wiped out the dinosaurs, we’re having an outsized impact. In the case of
climate, we are not the dinosaurs – we are the meteor. We are not only in
danger – we are the danger.”
Guterres insisted that the 1.5C target was “still just about possible” but said
there needed to be far greater effort from countries to slash carbon emissions,
to boost climate finance to poorer countries, and for the fossil-fuel industry
to be made pariahs by governments, the media and other businesses for its role
in causing the climate crisis."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
