During a visit to the Bahamas to show solidarity with the country’s people in the wake of the devastation caused by Hurricane Dorian, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres reiterated that the international community must take greater action to address the climate crisis.
“…the entire international community must address the climate crisis through raising ambition and action to implement the Paris Agreement,” he said during a joint press encounter with Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert Minnis on Friday, while urging leaders to attend the UN’s upcoming Climate Action Summit in New York “with plans, not speeches.”
Guterres noted that the best available science says we must ensure collectively that global temperature rise does not go beyond 1.5 degrees. He said that there is a window of less than 11 years to avoid irreversible climate disruption and that emissions must be reduced by 45 percent by 2030, and carbon neutrality achieved by 2050. “This is a battle for our lives, but it is a battle we can and must win,” he said. “Solutions exist, but for them to be achieved, we must shift taxes from people’s incomes to carbon, stop subsidising fossil fuels; and stop building new coal plants by 2020 across the world,” he added.
