ROME — United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned Saturday that Mount Kilimanjaro will lose its glacier by 2050 if countries fail to take “bolder” action to curb climate change.
The U.N.’s alarmist-in-chief had already warned participants in the COP27 climate summit that the world is on “a highway to climate hell” due to humanity’s “fossil fuel addiction” but added Saturday that global leaders “need to put the world back on track to limit global warming, and save our glaciers and the biodiversity that depends on them.”
“Without faster, bolder Climate Action, the glaciers that cap Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania will be gone by 2050,” Guterres asserted on Twitter.
The U.N. chief linked to a UNESCO press release claiming that glaciers in a third of the 50 World Heritage sites are “condemned” to disappear by 2050 and that the others can only be saved by urgent reduction of global emissions.
“New UNESCO data highlight the accelerated melting of glaciers in World Heritage sites, with glaciers in a third of sites set to disappear by 2050,” the press release stated. “But it is still possible to save the other two thirds, if the rise in global temperatures does not exceed 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial period.”
UNESCO asserted that glaciers “have been retreating at an accelerated rate since 2000 due to CO2 emissions, which are warming temperatures,” insisting that they “are currently losing 58 billion tons of ice every year – equivalent to the combined annual water use of France and Spain – and are responsible for nearly 5% of observed global sea-level rise.”
UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said the report is “a call to action.”
“Only a rapid reduction in our CO2 emissions levels can save glaciers and the exceptional biodiversity that depends on them,” she declared. “COP27 will have a crucial role to help find solutions to this issue. UNESCO is determined to support states in pursuing this goal.”