Climate Change

Thank you, Professor Taalas.

The indications are crystal clear.

Global heating is accelerating.

2019 was the second hottest year on record, with the past decade the hottest in human history.

Greenhouse gas concentrations are at the highest levels in 3 million years – when the Earth’s temperature was as much as 3 degrees hotter and sea levels some 15 metres higher.

Ocean heat is at a record level, with temperatures rising at the equivalent of five Hiroshima bombs a second.

[Scroll down for French version]

Dear students, dear friends,

It is a great pleasure to be here today. Thank you for honouring me with this degree and through me, the United Nations and our staff around the world.

The New School is a special place. I am an engineer by training and physics has been the biggest intellectual passion of my life. But I reserve my greatest admiration for artists, philosophers, social scientists and those who explain the world and make it more beautiful.

It is for me an enormous pleasure to start with this meeting on climate change my first official visit as Secretary-General to Pakistan. For more than ten years, as High Commissioner for Refugees, I came many times to Pakistan. And in those ten years, I developed a love affair with the Pakistani people and with Pakistan itself.

[Bilingual as delivered]

[Bilingual as delivered]

[English version; scroll down for bilingual as delivered version]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
 
As you know, 2020 marks a milestone for the United Nations – our 75th anniversary.
 
Too often, governments and international institutions are viewed as places that talk – not as places that listen.
 
I want the United Nations, in this anniversary, essentially to listen – so we are marking our anniversary based on conversations in every corner of the world about the future we want and the United Nations we need. 
 
There is no doubt that people have much to say.
 

It is indeed a pleasure to be with you today, and thank you for your strong commitment to climate action. 
 
I welcome this opportunity to meet early in the New Year to discuss what we must do together in the pivotal year ahead.
 
We have a huge task ahead of us.
 
The United Nations system, including myself, remain thoroughly committed to helping Member States address the climate emergency and turn threat into opportunity. 
 

[All-English version; scroll down for bilingual, as delivered version]

Dear friends,
 
We are still losing the climate race.
 
On our current trajectory we are looking at a 3- to 4-degree temperature rise by the end of the century.
 
But we can choose another path. 
 
The path of climate action and well-being for people and planet. 
 
And this path is about people’s jobs, health, education, opportunities, and their future.
 
Today, millions of workers are on the front lines of climate impacts.
 
Many in sectors like tourism and agriculture are losing livelihoods.