‘Change course now’: UN chief on failure to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said that humanity has failed to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius and warned that it must change course immediately, The Guardian reported.

In an interview to the British newspaper and Amazon-based news outlet Sumaúma ahead of next month’s COP30 conference, Guterres said that it is now “inevitable” that humanity will overshoot the target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which will have “devastating consequences” for the world.

Under the 2015 agreement, countries had agreed to keep the long-term global average surface temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century.

A warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius can lead to severe climate change impacts and extreme weather. Pre-industrial levels refer to global atmospheric conditions before the widespread impact of industrialisation, which included burning coal, oil and gas and other such activities.

COP30, or the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, will take place from November 10 to November 21 in Brazil’s Belém.

On Tuesday, the UN secretary-general urged leaders attending the COP30 to realise that the longer they delay cutting emissions, the greater the danger of passing catastrophic “tipping points” in...

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