CLIMATE CRISIS 'THE FIGHT OF OUR LIVES'

UN CHIEF IN STARK WARNING TO WORLD LEADERS AS COP27 SUMMIT KICKS OFF

- Nicholas Cecil

A UN chief issued an apocalyptic warning to world leaders at a global warming summit in Egypt today: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator”.

United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres told the COP27 gathering in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh that the world was in the “fight of our lives and we are losing”.

Seeking to spark far more urgent action from many nations in the battle against climate change, he stressed: “Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.

“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”

Mr Guterres called for a pact between the world’s richest and poorest countries to speed up the transition from fossil fuels and the delivery of the funding needed to ensure poorer countries can reduce emissions and cope with the unavoidable impacts of warming that had already occurred.

“The two largest economies — the United States and China — have a particular responsibility to join efforts to make this pact a reality,” he added.

Scientists have warned for years of the approaching climate change nightmare for millions of people. But Simon Stiell, of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, stated that the crisis was now hitting with devastating floods, warmer temperatures, destroyed crops and homes and more violent weather patterns.

The past eight years are on track to be the hottest on record, with the sea level rise accelerating, the melting of Europe’s alpine glaciers shattering records and devastating floods, including in Pakistan, drought and heatwaves and unusually warm autumn weather including in Britain.