With weather disasters costing $200 million a day and irreversible climate catastrophe looming, the world is “heading in the wrong direction,” the United Nations says in a new report that pulls together the latest science on climate change.
The World Meteorological Organization, in the latest stark warning about global warming, said weather-related disasters have increased fivefold over the last 50 years and are killing 115 per day on average – and the fallout is poised to worsen.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cited the floods in Pakistan, heat waves in Europe, droughts in places such as China, the Horn of Africa, and the United States – and pointed the finger at fossil fuels.
“There is nothing natural about the new scale of these disasters. They are the price of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction,” he said.
The report, drawn from data compiled by several U.N. agencies and partners, cited a 48% chance that global temperature rise compared to pre-industrial times will reach 1.5 degree Celsius in the next five years. There’s a 93% percent chance that one year in the next five will see record heat.
