U.N. Chief Guterres Scolds Humanity as ‘Weapon of Mass Extinction’

Humans, be ashamed. We are all party to a collective “weapon of mass extinction” only big government can challenge to end the planet’s “orgy of destruction,” the U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday.

Guterres made his stark warning to humankind as he despaired of declining biodiversity at the beginning of the two-week Cop15 environmental summit in Montreal, Canada. The event has drawn upwards of 10,000 delegates from all around the world to fly in for talks, meetings, presentations, and calls for action before they fly home again.

“The deluded dreams of billionaires aside, there is no Planet B,” the veteran Portuguese Socialist told the attendees at an event designed to engage governments in formal negotiations for U.N. biodiversity targets, the Guardian reports.

At the ceremony, the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged countries to agree a target to conserve 30 percent of Earth for nature in the final agreement.

“We have not chosen that 30% number at random. It is the critical threshold according to the greatest scientists to avoid the risk of extinction and also to ensure our food and economic security. Thirty percent, that is quite feasible,” Trudeau said in a speech that was interrupted by protesters holding up a sign about the murder of Indigenous peoples.

Nearly 200 countries have gathered for the December 7-19 UN Biodiversity Conference, the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

An estimated 10,000 delegates are in place to debate the adoption of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, described as “a global roadmap for the conservation, protection, restoration and sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystems for the next decade.”

“We are treating nature like a toilet,” Guterres said. “And ultimately, we are committing suicide by proxy,” with the effects felt on jobs, hunger, disease and death.