NEW YORK – For almost ten years, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has relied on scientific evidence to alert the public to increasingly perilous climate change with growing urgency. Now, he is turning to something that seems more crucial to global leaders: Money.
In an exclusive conversation with The Associated Press, Guterres praised the influence of market dynamics in what he repeatedly described as “a battle” to protect the planet. He referred to two recent UN reports highlighting the dramatic decrease in the cost of solar and wind energy and the rising production and capacity of these renewable energy sources. He cautioned those who continue to rely on fossil fuels that they risk financial ruin.
“Science and the economy show the way,” stated Guterres in a 20-minute discussion in his conference room on the 38th floor, offering a view of the New York skyline. “What we require is the political will to make the necessary decisions regarding regulatory frameworks, financial matters, and other policy dimensions. Governments must act decisively, rather than obstructing the natural progress towards a more rapid transition to renewables.”
That means by the end of the fall governments need to come up with new plans to fight climate change that are compatible with the global goal of limiting warming and ones that apply to the their entire economy and include all greenhouse gases, Guterres said.
But don’t expect one from the United States. President Donald Trump has pulled out of the landmark Paris climate agreement, slashed efforts to boost renewable energy and made fossil fuels a priority, including the dirtiest one in terms of climate and health, coal.
“Obviously, the (Trump) administration in itself is an obstacle, but there are others. The government in the U.S. doesn’t control everything,” Guterres said. Sure, Trump pulled out of the Paris accord, but many states and cities are trying to live up to the Biden administration’s climate-saving goals by reducing the burning of coal, oil and natural gas that release heat-trapping gases, Guterres said.
Invest in fossil fuels, risk stranded assets?
“People do not want to lose money. People do not want to make investments in what will become stranded assets,” Guterres said. “And I believe that even in the United States, we will go on seeing a reduction of emissions, I have no doubt about it.”
He said any new investments in exploring for new fossil fuel deposits “will be totally lost” and called them “just a waste of money.”
“I’m perfectly convinced that we will never be able, in the history of humankind, to spend all the oil and gas that was already discovered,” Guterres said.
But amid the hope of the renewable reports, Guterres said the world is still losing its battle on climate change, in danger of permanently passing 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degree Fahrenheit) warming since preindustrial times. That threshold is what the Paris agreement set up as a hoped-for global limit to warming 10 years ago.
Many scientists have already pronounced the 1.5 threshold dead. Indeed, 2024 passed that mark, though scientists say it requires a 20-year average, not a single year, to consider the threshold breached.
A scientific study from researchers who often work with the U.N. last month said the world is spewing so much carbon dioxide that sometime in early 2028, a couple years earlier than once predicted, passing the 1.5 mark will become scientifically inevitable.
Guterres: ‘We need to go on fighting’ even as it looks bleak
Guterres hasn’t given up on the 1.5 degree goal yet, though he said it looks bad.
“We see the acceleration of different aspects of climate change., rising seas, glaciers melting, heat waves, storms of different kinds,” he said.
“We need to go on fighting,” he said. “I think we are on the right side of history.”
Guterres, who spoke to AP after addressing the U.N. Security Council on the Israeli occupation of Gaza, said there’s only one way to solve that seemingly intractable issue: An immediate ceasefire, a release of all remaining hostages, access for humanitarian relief and “paving the way for a serious political process leading to the two-state solution. Some people say the two-state solution is now becoming extremely difficult. Even some saying it’s impossible. But the question is, what is the alternative?”
Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan are all crises, Guterres said, but climate change is an existential problem for the entire planet. And he said people don’t realize how climate-caused droughts and extreme weather can feed poverty and terrorism. He pointed to the Sahel as an example.
“We see that people live in worse and worse conditions, less and less capacity to grow their crops, less and less capital,” he said. “And this is largely due to climate change.”
“Everything is interlinked: Climate change, artificial intelligence, geopolitical divides, the problems of inequality and injustice,” Guterres said. “And we need to make sure that we make progress in all of them at the same time.”
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