It was a great speech Umair, but it's not a completely honest one. Even at this desperate juncture Guterres is not being completely open.
Ask yourself, why would he give this speech now?
It's filled with warnings. It lays out what is going to be necessary to try and save global civilization.
The size and scope of which should only surprise those who haven't been paying attention. Guterres is telling the world's leaders that the world is going to have to go on a "Global wartime footing". That's the implication of his speech.
The bit about "the problem cannot be solved by a coalition of the willing" implies that he wants an agreement that has enforcement powers and force. He is telling them that anyone who doesn't get on board. Has to be made to get on board.
You are right this is an astonishing speech. Now ask yourself, why now?
What's changed so suddenly that he would make this impassioned plea to the world leaders. Now, today?
That's the part he glosses over. The part he hints at with his warnings but never comes right out and says. That's the most important thing you should want to know Umair.
Because you don't give a speech like this normally. This is a speech that is far to revealing about what’s really being said behind closed doors.
A speech like this can end your career. Make you look like a "Doomer". Make you look "crazy", "radical", "deranged". You don't hear political figures make speeches like this very often.
The fact that he made this speech is a data point indicating the Climate Crisis is much worse than people understand. Just like Putin's invasion of Ukraine indicates that the Climate Crisis has started. Or China's hoarding 50% of the global grain reserves so that it can feed itself for 18 months in the event of catastrophic global agricultural failures.
All of them seem to be acting on the understanding that the situation is much worse than is apparent at this time. All of them are acting as if that state isn't going to last much longer.
What Guterres isn't saying is that Hansen is right. Warming has accelerated to 0.36C/decade since 2015. This means 2C more of warming by 2070 at the latest.
What Guterres isn't saying is that we fundamentally misunderstood the Earth’s Climate System from the very beginning. We didn't know that we were living in an exceptionally cold period.
We didn't know this is the coldest the planet has been in 300my. We didn't know that CO2 levels were extremely low in terms of the last 500my.
We didn't have the Ice Cores telling us that over the last 3 million years the level of atmospheric CO2 has only fluctuated between 180ppm and 280ppm. And that 100ppm fluctuation caused 6C of global temperature change.
The difference between the New York of today and New York under a mile of ice.
We didn't know that the CO2 level was so low. And we didn't understand that Global Warming is "front loaded". The biggest surge of warming happens at the beginning.
When CO2 levels are the lowest.
180ppm-280ppm raised the GMT 6C. In the paleoclimate record going from 280ppm-400ppm raises the GMT another 4C.
We are now at 420ppm.
What Guterres isn't saying is that we are going to get 4C of warming by 2070. That there was NEVER any safe amount of CO2 we could dump into the atmosphere. That this is our LAST CHANCE to mobilize and try and save our civilization.
His audience, the world leaders. They know this. They are starting to get scared, they are starting to understand just how much the fossil fuel interests have fucked us all.
They are still trying to deny it's happening. This speech was him trying to get them to accept the truth and act on it.
But he stopped short of telling us all how bad it really is. He didn't tell us all that the world is rapidly going to get hotter and hotter for the next 60 years. Or that global agricultural outputs are about to have multifocal production failures. So that as many as 1.5 billion people starve in the next five-six years.
He wasn't that honest. They still aren't saying everything.
