'We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator' -António Guterres issues grim warning at COP27 in Egypt as Africa speaks up

Here is our top story today: United Nations Secretary General António Guterres warned minutes ago that the climate crisis has so much deteriorated that humanity is now on “a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”

“The clock is ticking. We are in the fight of our lives. And we are losing,” Guterres said in remarks at the 2022 United Nations Climate Conference (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

The UN chief warned that with greenhouse gas emissions growing and global temperatures rising, “our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.” 

In Switzerland, the WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also issued a grim warning about the climate crisis, asserting that climate change was killing people.

In Pretoria, President Cyril Ramaphosa, warned just hours ago in a letter to South Africans that “Our common future depends on climate action now.”

In Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the Chairperson of the African Union and President of Senegal, Macky Sall, said we must act to save the planet and that we have to implement the Paris Agreement. Sall said that every day, we can see how climate is changing.

He noted that although Africa contributes less than 4 percent of global pollution, the continent is in the forefront of the fight against climate change. He said Africa is in favor of green transition and that Africa needs help, financial help to fight against climate change from those who pollute the planet the most.

The climate crisis is real but also controversial in the United States. Many here argue that because there are billions of dollars at stake with the bulk of the money is coming from the United States, the IMF, the World Bank, the UN, the WHO and other international organizations are very much involved and pushing the narrative that the planet is going to hell and green transition should be done right now. They argue that the world is not ready for the kind of green transition that the corporations are pushing for.

For me, I can feel the changes, I can see the devastation, I can see the suffering of people but also the money to be gained by a few corporations while people are dying of hunger.

Simon Ateba, Publisher and White House Correspondent for Today News Africa in Washington.

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