“Scientists are now worried that unless accelerated action is taken by 2020, the Paris goal may become unattainable,” the UN chief told reporters at the world body’s New York Headquarters.
“I am beginning to wonder how many more alarm bells must go off before the world rises to the challenge,” Mr. Guterres said, noting that 2017 had been filled with climate chaos and 2018 has already brought more of the same.
“Climate change is still moving much faster than we are,” he warned, calling the phenomenon the greatest threat facing humankind.
Recent information from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the World Bank and the International Energy Agency shows the relentless pace of climate change.
For instance, the UN chief said, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.4 per cent, to a historic high of 32.5 gigatonnes.Now I don't want to piss on Justin's Pipeline Parade but Canada has stepped into the Dark Side. We can't blame this on a bunch of foreign oil companies and Texas pipeline bandits. From now on in, it's pretty much "Made in Canada" and it comes with Justin's winning smile stamped right on it.
In social as well as economic terms, the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was devastating, washing away decades of development in an instant.
In South Asia, major monsoon floods affected 41 million people.
In Africa, severe drought drove nearly 900,000 people from their homes.
Wildfires caused destruction across the world. Arctic sea ice cover in winter is at its lowest level, and the oceans are warmer and more acidic than at any time in recorded history.
“This tsunami of data should create a storm of concern,” Mr. Guterres said, noting that next year he will convene a climate summit in New York aimed at boosting global ambition to meet the level of the climate challenge.Yeah, well, Antonio, not so much. The scientists have told us we have to leave that bitumen in the ground and we've answered with a resounding "fuck you, we'll do as we please."
No matter how many cowardly newspaper editorial boards cast this pipeline as an economic issue, it's much, much more than that. This is life and death, especially for the poorest, most vulnerable people on Earth and, at the very least, a brutal and ruinous future for our grandchildren and their kids.
This is a huge catastrophic threat to the coastline of British Columbia and the tens of thousands of jobs that would be lost from a tanker calamity in these treacherous, congested waters. An ordinary, conventional oil spill takes 50 years to clean up. Remember the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska, a quarter century ago? It's still a mess and recently marine biologists warned that one of the two local orca pods will soon be no more.
There's no shortage of clean crude oil on the market but we're going to undercut that with rotgut bitumen at bargain basement prices. You've got to go low to flog that stuff. And you've got to be low to go low. Trudeau might as well revive the asbestos trade.
