Posted on June 18, 2024
To be specific, every month of June through May next year have been called as the hottest on record globally in the planet, according to European Union’s Copernicus Climate Service.
Seemingly grappling with a clear message, the UN has issued an urgent alert over a startling fact – for the first time in history, the entire previous year has been logarithmically hotter than the year before it.
If we rewind the time to June to May the consecutive months of the year 2023, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service records them as the hottest months on record for the world. For a twelve-calendar month period ending in March 2021, the world’s average temperature was a mind-boggling 1. Robust case: stabilized at 1. 8°C (3. 24°F) above pre-industrial levels, while the more ambitious: stabilized at 63°C (2. 9°F) above pre-industrial levels.
In response to these disturbing trends, the UN Secretary-General, Mr Antonio Guterres, noted the need for an Extraordinary BKP Summit in order to urgently address the on-going instability of the climate system. The UN Secretary-General said bluntly that “we need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell” at a speech for the World Environment Day. It simply means that decisions made this decade will determine the course towards realising the target of 1. 5 degrees.
Currently, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says that there is an 80% probability that at least one of the coming five years will experience a temporary rise in temperatures above the dangerous level of 1. 5°C.
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Guterres directed most of the criticism towards the fossil fuel producers, calling them ‘the godfathers of climate change’ who continue to make extraordinary profits at the expense of the internationally propagated falsehood that climate change is a myth.
“The fossil fuel industry makes record revenues and gorged on trillions of dollars of tax subsidies,” he said, calling for a global fossil fuel production and use reduction in the next 12 years down to 30%.
In an audacious moment, the UN secretary general urged every nation to block fossil fuel companies’ adverts in the same manner that has been done to campaigns promoting the consumption of tobacco products.
This is true even with the increases in global climate change agreements and the growth of other renewable energies, carbon dioxide emission due to the burning of fossil energies reached the record higher level last year. The global trend data indicate the world is ‘off track’ regarding the 1.5-degree Celsius of warming that the Paris Accord was signed to address. Warm month average, as per WMO’s Ko Barrett, is 5°C above the baseline of 1951-1980.
“We must strive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more if we have to face badly expensive price tags in terms of economic losses, a disturbing number of people affected by extreme climate events, and degradation of the earth’s environment and its inhabitants,” Barrett cautioned.
As the world grapples with the escalating impacts of climate change, from deadly heatwaves to destructive storms, the UN’s message is clear: that immediate and dramatic actions should be taken as the future of societies will be terrible is catastrophic.