UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has really embraced climate change as the defining issue of his tenure, BBC reported.
His speeches have perhaps been the strongest public advocacy for urgent action on cutting emissions.
His remarks to the leader’s summit here in Glasgow were very much in that vein.
Fossil fuels were pushing humanity to the brink, he said.
The world faced a stark choice – we stop it, or it stops us.
Guterres said the belief that recent announcements from countries to cut carbon would turn things around was “an illusion”.
He said that at the end of this COP, if the world wasn’t on track then countries should come back with updated plans every year – and not every five years as is currently the case.
And perhaps channelling the movie, Trainspotting, Mr Guterres finished with an Irvine Welsh-like flourish.
“Choose ambition, choose solidarity, choose to safeguard our future and save humanity,” he said.
