‘Climate change is here, it is terrifying, and it is just beginning’, says UN chief

The secretary general of the United Nations António Guterres appealed for immediate action to counter the arrival of “global boiling” in an impassioned intervention as wildfires raged across the Mediterranean and new data indicated July will be the hottest month on record.

“Climate change is here, it is terrifying, and it is just beginning,” he told a news conference.

“The consequences are clear and they are tragic. Children swept away by monsoon rains. Families running from the flames. Workers collapsing in scorching heat.”

He added: “We can stop the worst, but to do so we must turn a year of burning heat into a year of burning ambition and accelerate climate action now.”

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It came as the World Meteorological Organisation released data indicating that July 2023 will almost certainly be the hottest July and hottest month on record.

This month saw the hottest three week period ever recorded on Earth, the hottest three days on record, and the highest ocean temperatures for this time of year, setting fresh records after last month was the hottest June recorded.

The consequences were playing out in a belt of uncontrolled wildfires across the Mediterranean region from Portugal, Spain, Algeria, southern France, Italy, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, to Syria, and extremes of weather elsewhere.

Mr Guterres appealed for financial institutions to stop lending money to the fossil fuel industry, for an end to the use of coal, and an acceleration of the switch to renewable energy, saying there should be “no more hesitancy or excuses”.

“For the entire planet, it is a disaster. And for scientists, it is unequivocal – humans are to blame,” he told reporters.

“All this is entirely consistent with predictions and repeated warnings. The only surprise is the speed of the change.”

The UN chief also said countries needed to invest in adapting to the amount of climate change that has been caused already by carbon emissions, by designing cities to cope with greater heat and building flood defences.

Climatologist Prof John Sweeney of Maynooth University said “use of the term boiling point is quite emotive”, but Mr Guterres was desperately trying to get people motivated to take action. It implied there was no possibility of recovery in that people could not reverse the impacts of an overheating planet, which he believes is not the case.

But he accepted Mr Guterres was trying to convey that the world was close to a tipping point and the window for action was closing rapidly – and in that sense his description of where the world is at was justified.

Prof Sweeney said climate models looked at the trend of averages, but there were separate indicators of heating “moving faster than we might have thought five years ago”.

He noted the UK Met Office finding that last year’s heatwave in Britain is likely to be regarded as a cold summer by end of the century. “We are quite clearly on that trend.”

Stop Climate Chaos Coalition co-ordinator Sadhbh O’Neill said, “it is ironic that the UN secretary general is saying what politicians won’t: we’re in a global climate crisis and the impacts of burning fossil fuels are hitting us hard, much sooner and much more severely than was expected.”

“We echo his call to the financial sector to stop investing in fossil fuel projects immediately; an immediate end to burning coal (which for us in Ireland means early closure of Moneypoint) and measures to ramp up renewable energy to replace oil, gas, diesel and petrol,” she added.

“This is not just about securing our summer holidays. For millions of people around the world this is about survival as the world is ravaged by climate breakdown. We can only hope political leaders like Leo Varadkar are listening, and it’s all our jobs – not just environmentalists – to make sure all our political leaders do listen to Mr Guterres.”

UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change author Prof Peter Thorne said the Earth is clearly not boiling in the literal sense – but was running “a significant temporary fever on top of the ever increasing background temperature”.

“What we are experiencing now is a pretty extreme combination of underlying warming and natural variability. If we were sane and rational beings we would recognise this as a calling card from our personal futures if we do not radically recant on our addiction to fossil fuels and high-carbon intensity agriculture,” he added.

“The question left hanging, inevitably, is will we? If we do not, then this is the future we will experience and that of our children and grandchildren will be worse still. We should heed the warning siren before it’s too late,” Prof Thorne said.

“Once again the UN secretary general has given us a stark warning that must be heeded by our political leaders. The reality is privileged economies and major corporations have failed to take responsibility for drastically reducing their greenhouse gas emissions,” said Siobhán Curran, head of policy and advocacy at Trócaire. “Our Government must show leadership to rapidly reduce emissions and provide our fair share of financial support to the poorest countries in the world who are already bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.”

The extreme weather had deadly consequences across the Mediterranean as wildfires killed 34 people in Algeria and several more in Italy and Greece, where more than 20,000 people were evacuated.

Italy faced the twin extremes of violent storms in the north, where severe hail destroyed crops, and wildfires tore through the parched landscape of the country’s south.

In Sicily, where firefighters said they have fought 1,400 forest fires since Sunday, a photograph of exhausted firemen slumped on the pavement in the area of Carlentini went viral as a symbol of their struggle.

Palermo mayor Roberto Lagalla told local media that wildfires are almost always begun by human activity – sometimes unintentionally, but sometimes due to vandalism or a desire to clear land for building or agriculture.

“The multiplicity of outbreaks in recent days indicates malicious acts, an act of absolute wickedness that destroys the land and the environment,” Mr Lagalla said, comparing it to the crimes of the mafia.

The cities of Catania and Palermo suffered periodic electricity blackouts and interruptions to the water supply amid sweltering temperatures as wildfire smoke choked the air.

Sicilian bishops issued a statement condemning those who start fires, accusing them of creating a “hell on earth”.

“Woods, countryside, roads, highways, houses, airports, archaeological parks, landfills, churches burn ... The evil hands of heartless and conscienceless vandals took the lives of three elderly people,” the bishops wrote.

It followed the deaths of a couple in their 70s who were found in their burnt-out home on the outskirts of Palermo, and the death of a woman in her 80s who could not be reached by an ambulance due to the fires.