UN Secretary General: "Let's Recognize Our Failure" - 1.5C Climate Target Negotiated In Paris Is Dead

[hatrack]

Humanity has failed to limit global heating to 1.5C and must change course immediately, the secretary general of the UN has warned. In his only interview before next month’s Cop30 climate summit, António Guterres acknowledged it is now “inevitable” that humanity will overshoot the target in the Paris climate agreement, with “devastating consequences” for the world.

He urged the leaders who will gather in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belém to realise that the longer they delay cutting emissions, the greater the danger of passing catastrophic “tipping points” in the Amazon, the Arctic and the oceans. “Let’s recognise our failure,” he told the Guardian and Amazon-based news organisation Sumaúma. “The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5C in the next few years. And that going above 1.5C has devastating consequences. Some of these devastating consequences are tipping points, be it in the Amazon, be it in Greenland, or western Antarctica or the coral reefs.

He said the priority at Cop30 was to shift direction: “It is absolutely indispensable to change course in order to make sure that the overshoot is as short as possible and as low in intensity as possible to avoid tipping points like the Amazon. We don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don’t change course and if we don’t make a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible.”

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Despite growing pressure on the COP system of global environmental governance, Guterres said it played a crucial role. “The alternative is a free-for-all,” he said. “And we know what free for all means. Free for all means that there will be a small privileged elite, people and companies that will be able to always protect themselves, even if disasters will spread. Floods will spread, communities will be destroyed, but there will always be a group of rich people and rich companies that will be able to protect themselves as the planet is being progressively destroyed.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/28/change-course-now-humanity-has-missed-15c-climate-target-says-un-head

[-misanthroptimist]

1. We will be hard pressed to keep under 2C warming

In fact, I don't believe we will stay below 2C. The great god Market (peace be unto it!) won't allow us to address CC since it might impede the growth of Market's only begotten son, Economy.

[Clouds Passing]

2. Time to eat the oil magnates, industrialists, human caused global warming/poisoning deniers