Currently — June 16, 2023: UN Secretary-General calls for global fossil fuel exit strategy

The weather, currently.

In an address to climate negotiators on Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for a coordinated exit strategy for the global fossil fuel industry.

“We are hurtling towards disaster, eyes wide open,” said Guterres, calling the continued use of fossil fuels “incompatible with human survival.” His comments come in the run-up to this year’s global climate talks in Dubai, and amid fresh evidence that global warming is accelerating and that the countries of the world aren’t doing nearly enough to stop it.

The planet just completed its warmest first-half of June on record, with global ocean temperatures at an all-time high for more than three months straight. The waters in the Main Development Region of the Atlantic Ocean, the region of the tropics where most hurricanes form, are as warm in June as they typically are the first week of September.

The grandfather of climate science, James Hansen, has a new post out that argues that we could be in the early years of an acceleration of global warming, which may see us reach 2.0°C of warming by 2050, and 1.5°C as soon as 2024.

That fossil fuel companies are intentionally causing this to happen to make more money for themselves needs to be widely seen as morally reprehensible. We’re nearly there, and already popular movements are in place to bring a better world into being.

—Eric Holthaus

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