Climate report must be ‘death knell’ for fossil fuels: UN chief

A bombshell climate science report “must sound a death knell” for coal, oil and gas, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Monday (Aug 9), warning that fossil fuels were destroying the planet.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature goal of the Paris Agreement would likely be breached around 2030 – a decade earlier than it itself projected just three years ago.

Guterres called the IPCC’s assessment – the most detailed review of climate science ever conducted – “code red for humanity”.

“This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy our planet,” he said in a statement.

“Countries should also end all new fossil fuel exploration and production, and shift fossil fuel subsidies into renewable energy.”

In its first major scientific assessment since 2014, the IPCC said that Earth’s average surface temperature is projected to hit 1.5 or 1.6 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels at around 2030, no matter what trajectory greenhouse gas emissions take in the meantime.

Agencies