Digging our own grave, time to say enough: UN secy gen António Guterres at COP26
Guterres said our addiction to fossil fuels was pushing humanity to the brink. “We face a stark choice - either we stop it or it stops us. It's time to say ‘enough’,” the UN chief said.
United Nations secretary general António Guterres on Monday said the world was digging its own grave by burning fossil fuels and destroying the environment.
Speaking at the ceremonial opening of the UN’s COP26 climate summit in Scotland's Glasgow, Guterres said our addiction to fossil fuels was pushing humanity to the brink. “We face a stark choice - either we stop it or it stops us. It's time to say ‘enough’,” the UN chief said.
“Enough of brutalising biodiversity, enough of killing ourselves with Carbon, enough of treating nature like a toilet, enough of burning, drilling and mining our way deeper. We're digging our own graves. Our planet is changing before our eyes,” Guterres said, adding the six years since the Paris Climate Agreement have been the six hottest years on record.
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More than 120 heads of states and governments have reached Glasgow for a two-day summit at the start of the UN's COP26 conference, which organisers say is crucial for charting humanity's path away from catastrophic global warming.
Addressing the gathering, Prime Minister of United Kingdom Boris Johnson said the world was strapped to a “doomsday device” and likened an ever-warming Earth’s position to that of fictional secret agent James Bond — strapped to a bomb that will destroy the planet and trying to work out how to defuse it.
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US President Joe Biden, India's Narendra Modi and Germany's Angela Merkel were all set to deliver speeches expected to reiterate the need for urgency.
(With agency inputs)