Read more at The Guardian

• 1.5°C Target Failure: UN Secretary General António Guterres acknowledged that humanity has failed to limit global heating to 1.5°C (the Paris Agreement target) and that temporarily overshooting this goal is now “inevitable.”
• Devastating Consequences: This overshoot will have “devastating consequences,” particularly by increasing the danger of passing catastrophic “tipping points” in major ecosystems like the Amazon, the Arctic, and coral reefs.
• Urgent Call to Action: The immediate priority for leaders at the upcoming Cop30 summit in Belém is to “change course” to ensure the overshoot is as short and low-intensity as possible to prevent permanent damage (e.g., the Amazon turning into a savanna).
• Lack of Commitment: The past decade has been the hottest on record, yet government commitments (Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs) are critically insufficient.
• Emissions Gap: To stay within the 1.5°C target, a 60% reduction in emissions is needed; however, the NDCs submitted so far only project an expectation of a 10% reduction.
• Fossil Fuel Transition: Guterres stated that the era of fossil fuels is ending, and the transition to renewables is a matter of economic self-interest because a “renewables revolution” is already underway.
• Influence of Lobbyists: He called for rebalancing representation at Cops to give civil society and Indigenous communities more influence than corporate lobbyists, noting that lobbyists seek to increase profits “with the price being paid by humankind.”