World already ‘paying terrible price’ for climate inaction: Guterres

PARIS: Humanity is ´paying a terrible price´ for inaction on global warming, with time running out to correct the course and avoid climate disaster, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday.

A new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) says the next decade is critical in the fight against climate change or any hope of limiting global warming to 1.5C will be lost.

The current pace of climate action would result in a catastrophic 3.1 degrees Celsius of warming this century, UNEP said in its latest Emissions Gap report.

And even if all existing pledges to cut emissions were enacted as promised, global temperatures would soar 2.6C above pre-industrial levels -- a still devastating scenario for humanity.

“Either leaders bridge the emissions gap, or we plunge headlong into climate disaster, with the poorest and most vulnerable suffering the most,” said Guterres.

“Around the world, people are paying a terrible price.”

The call to action follows a streak of destructive and deadly extreme weather and comes in a year expected to be the hottest in recorded history.

The world´s poorest have been particularly hard hit, with typhoons and heatwaves in Asia and the Caribbean, floods in Africa, and droughts and wildfires in Latin America.

Nations meeting at the COP29 climate summit next month in Azerbaijan hope to agree on increasing finance for the developing world to cope with climate change.