The world is in a "deplorable state" due to a host of interconnected challenges, including climate change and Russia's war against Ukraine, which are "piling up like cars in a chain collision," United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said today in Davos, at the World economic forum.
Guterres made his gloomy assessment on the second day of the four-day annual meeting in the Swiss winter center of Davos, which gathers the world's elite, from politicians to the heads of the largest companies.
In his words, "the most serious level of geopolitical divisions and mistrust, which has not been seen for generations", undermines the fight against global problems, among which are the deepening gap between the rich and the poor, the lack of means of living due to rampant inflation, the energy crisis, the effects of the covid-19 virus pandemic , disruptions in supply chains...
Guterres singled out climate change as an "existential challenge" and assessed that the global effort to limit global warming to 1,5 degrees above pre-industrial levels has "almost failed."
The first man of the world organization and one of the most prominent advocates of the fight against climate change referred to a recent study that showed that scientists at the oil company Exxon Mobil made remarkably accurate predictions of the effects of climate change back in the 1970s - even though the corporate giant publicly led the question that global warming exists at all.
"We found out last Sunday that certain fossil fuel producers were fully aware that their key product was cooking our planet back in the XNUMXs," Guterres said, adding: "Some among the big oil companies were selling a big lie."
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