Why is media ignoring UN Secretary-General’s warning to humanity?
Global Climate Change threatens our existence! In a powerful statement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres rung the alarm bell on the climate crisis. Here’s how the media reacted.
This is a blog post by Dr. Peter Carter who questions why the media have failed to cover Mr. Guterres when on May 15 he was calling climate change an existential threat.
WeDontHaveTime now join Mr. Carter in asking: why is the media not covering this story?
The following is written by one of the keynote speakers for the WeDontHaveTime Climate Conference. It reflects Dr. Peter Carters’ personal views. Mr Carter is also the co-author (with Elizabeth Woodworth) of the book ‘Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival’ and Managing Director of the Climate Emergency Institute, Canada.
Dr Carter is herein stressing the importance of the fact that one of the highest ranked world leaders calls the crisis concretely: a threat to our very existence. It proves that the need for action in regards to the climate crisis is urgent. Perhaps we should ask ourselves: why is it that the media are not reporting this alarming speech more widely? Here is Dr Carters’ statement:
On May 15, 2018 at the Austrian World Summit, the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, made an historic statement on global climate change, saying it is “an existential threat.” My friends and colleagues involved in global climate change had not heard about the speech several days after it was made, and I discovered incredibly that the world media did not report it. I checked on Google News again today and apart from the UN media release, only one news outlet carried it, the United News of India on May 17.
To my mind, this video statement is the most important and momentous statement ever made by a world leader:
Climate change is, quite simply, an existential threat for most life on the planet — including, and especially, the life of humankind.
The quote was made by António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, Remarks at the Austrian World Summit, May 15, 2018. Read more and see the speech here.
Below I quote key excerpts from the speech, for the We Don’t Have Time Climate Conference, on Earth Day April 22 2018, to send out to the world.
“Every day, I am faced with the challenges of our troubled and complex world. But none of them loom so large as climate change.
If we fail to meet the challenge, all our other challenges will just become greater and threaten to swallow us.
Climate change is, quite simply, an existential threat for most life on the planet — including, and especially, the life of humankind.
That is why we must use all our resources to build a sense of urgency.
We must act with common purpose to raise ambition while we still have time to limit temperature rise to well below 2 degrees, and as close to 1.5 degrees as possible.
We do need a new energy revolution.
The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones. We do not need to wait for coal and oil to run out to end the age of fossil fuels.
A great many solutions already exist or are in the pipeline.
And it will deliver significant health benefits.
Air pollution affects nearly all of us, regardless of borders. The World Health Organization reports that more than 80 per cent of people living in urban areas are exposed to poor — and dangerous — air quality.
In China, it is estimated that fewer deaths from improved air quality could lead to savings of nearly $340 billion dollars by 2030 — four times the cost of meeting China’s climate goals. This, surely, is the definition of win-win-win.
The International Energy Agency estimates that investment in renewable electricity last year was $242 billion. That is more than half of what was invested in new fossil fuel development. That figure is promising, but remains insufficient. For a full-scale transition to clean energy, we must see billions invested by 2020.
Despite inspiring climate action in so many places, climate change continues to move faster than we are.
As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says: “The more we disrupt our climate, the more we risk severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts.”
Let’s join a race to the top, a race where there are only winners.”
At the 2017 climate summit called by French President Emmanuel Macron, UN Secretary-General Guterres had warned that humanity was losing the war “for the very existence of life on our planet as we know it.”
He pointed to the top single indispensable measure that governments must make to rescue our common future — stopping subsidizing fossil fuels. Despite this (and G7 and G20 pledges), almost all governments continue to subsidize fossil fuels. The UN leader said that by subsidizing fossil fuels, humanity is “investing in its own doom.”
We have a mighty ally in our UN Secretary-General, António Guterres. We must make up where the media let us down, by getting this momentous message out.
Peter Carter, MD
Climate Emergency Institute, Canada
You can watch Peter Carters’ keynote from the WeDontHaveTime Climate Conference here.
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