UN Secretary-General Warns of 'Critical Juncture' in Fight Against Climate Change at COP25

UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the world is at a “critical juncture” in the fight against climate change during the opening remarks of the 2019 UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid, Spain, on December 2.

The secretary-general warned that the world is on one of two paths in the fight against global warming, one of which, he said, “is sleepwalking past the point of no return”. The other path, he said, is “the path of hope” and the one which will lead the world toward carbon neutrality by 2050.

Guterres’s speech came at the start of two weeks of talks on climate change taking place in Madrid between delegates from all over the world aimed at bolstering the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Also speaking at the opening ceremony were Hoesung Lee, the Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez; and Chile’s environment minister, Carolina Schmidt. Credit: UN Climate Change via Storyful