UN chief urges global action to tackle extreme heat

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called for global action to tackle extreme heat, as "extreme temperatures are no longer a one day, one week or one month phenomenon."

"Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere," Guterres said in remarks to the press on extreme heat.

Billions of people are facing an extreme heat epidemic -- wilting under increasingly deadly heatwaves, with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius around the world, said the UN chief. "That's ... halfway to boiling."

Highlighting the impact of extreme temperatures, Guterres noted a deadly heatwave hitting the Sahel with spiking hospitalizations and deaths, broken temperature records across the United States, scorching conditions killing 1,300 pilgrims during Haj, tourist attractions shut down in Europe's sweatbox cities, and schools closures across Asia and Africa impacting more than 80 million children.

"Extreme heat is increasingly tearing through economies, widening inequalities, undermining the Sustainable Development Goals and killing people," he said.

According to the UN chief, heat is estimated to kill almost half a million people a year, that's about 30 times more than tropical cyclones.

"Extreme heat is the new abnormal," he said, pointing to "fossil fuel-charged, human-induced climate change" as the cause behind extreme temperatures.

"But the good news is that there are solutions," he said.

The UN chief announced a global call to action with four areas of focus: caring for the most vulnerable; stepping up protections for workers; boosting the resilience of economies and societies using data and science; and fighting the "disease" -- "the madness of incinerating our only home," the addiction to fossil fuels, and climate inaction.

He urged that leaders across the board must wake up and step up, including governments as well as the private sector, cities and regions, noting that "all countries must deliver by next year nationally determined contributions -- or national climate action plans -- aligned to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius."

Noting that the International Energy Agency has shown fossil fuel expansion and new coal plants are inconsistent with meeting that limit, Guterres urged countries to phase-out fossil fuels, "fast and fairly."

"They must end new coal projects," he stressed.

The UN chief called on the G20 to shift fossil fuel subsidies to renewables and to the support of vulnerable countries and communities.

"And national climate action plans must show how each country will contribute to the global goals agreed at COP28 to triple the world's renewables capacity, and end deforestation by 2030. They must also cut global consumption and production of fossil fuels by 30 percent in the same timeframe," he said.

Guterres also called for similar 1.5-aligned transition plans from business, the financial sector, cities and regions.

Noting that climate action also requires finance action, he said that includes countries coming together for a strong finance outcome from COP29; progress on innovative sources of finance; drastically boosting the lending capacity of multilateral development banks to help developing countries tackle the climate crisis; and wealthier countries making good on all their climate finance commitments.

"The message is clear: the heat is on," said the UN chief, calling on the world to "rise to the challenge of rising temperatures."