UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday urged all the countries across the globe to declare a “climate emergency” as yesterday marked the 5th anniversary of of the Paris climate accord.
At the online Climate Ambition Summit, co-hosted by the UN, the UK and France, Guterres said, “Can anybody still deny that we are facing a dramatic emergency?” Guterres said “I urge all others to follow.”
“This is unacceptable. The trillions of dollars needed for Covid recovery is money that we are borrowing from future generations. This is a moral test. We cannot use these resources to lock in policies that burden future generations with a mountain of debt on a broken planet,” he added.
More than 70 world leaders, civil society activists, business chiefs and city mayors were in attendance at the Climate Ambition Summit.
“It is the melting of permafrost; forest fires that hit closer to the home of the climate crisis deniers; droughts that ransack living beings of their resources; floods that reminded many of us that we have no escape,” Selina Neirok Leem, a campaigner from the Marshall Islands, told the summit.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged the world to collectively fight against the pollution while we combat the covid-19.
“And at the same time, we can create hundreds of thousands of jobs, millions of jobs, across the planet as we collectively recover from coronavirus,” Johnson said.
“We call on companies and governments around the world to do all we can to make 2021 the year we turn the corner for good,” Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook told the summit.
