Missing 1.5C climate target is a moral failure, UN chief tells Cop30 summit

UN secretary general António Guterres urges opening session in Brazil to bring about a ‘paradigm shift’

The failure to limit global heating to 1.5C is a “moral failure and deadly negligence”, the UN secretary general has said at the opening session of the Cop30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.

António Guterres said even a temporary overshoot would have “dramatic consequences. It could push ecosystems past catastrophic tipping points, expose billions to unliveable conditions and amplify threats to peace and security.”

Speaking to heads of state from more than 30 countries, Guterres called the target of limiting global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels a “red line” for a habitable planet and urged his audience to bring about a “paradigm shift” so that the effects of the overshoot could be minimised.

“Every fraction of a degree means more hunger, displacement and loss – especially for those least responsible. This is moral failure – and deadly negligence,” he said.

On Thursday, the World Meteorological Organization confirmed that greenhouse gas emissions, which are heating the planet, had risen to a record high. It said 2025 was on track to be the second or third warmest year ever recorded. All of the 10 hottest years in measured history have been in the past decade.

Guterres said there had been some progress but it was not fast enough. Many countries had put forward more ambitious plans to cut emissions. If they were fully implemented, he said, the world would be on a pathway to about 2.3C of global warming.

This forecast leaves the planet in dangerous territory but is considerably better than seemed possible 20 years ago. This is largely thanks to international support for the 2015 Paris agreement and a clean energy revolution that is gathering pace. But several powerful countries are stepping away from climate action as far-right nationalism takes hold, particularly the US.

Guterres said the oil, gas and coal industries were holding back change. In his fiercest criticism yet, he said these companies commanded vast subsidies and political support and used them to the detriment of everyone else.

He said: “Too many corporations are making record profits from climate devastation, with billions spent on lobbying, deceiving the public and obstructing progress.”

The summit – and next week’s Cop30 – takes place in turbulent times. Much of the world is distracted by war, and the US is leading an attack on efforts to build international collaboration to deal with shared global problems.

Ding Xuexiang, a vice-premier of China, made a thinly veiled reference to Trump’s tariffs, saying the green energy transition depended on a free flow of green technology and the removal of trade barriers. “China is a country that honours its commitments,” he said, noting that his country, which is the world’s biggest carbon emitter, has set a goal for the next five years to peak its carbon use and reinforce ecological security goals.

Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, had particularly harsh words for the absent, science-denying US president. “Mr Trump is literally against humankind,” he said. “We can see the collapse that will happen if US does not decarbonise its economy. It is 100% wrong.”

“This is a real apocalypse,” he said. In addition to Trump, he laid much of the blame at the feet of petroleum industry lobbyists in the Cop system. “They are going against life. This is immoral. This is not human.” As a result, he said, the world had lurched from climate change to climate crisis and now faced climate collapse.

Many countries have already been hit by climate disasters. The UK’s Prince William noted the world was moving perilously close to tipping points in the natural systems – ocean currents, rainforest and ice caps – that all life depends on. Among the solutions, he said, was the need to acknowledge that Indigenous people were climate leaders and to give them legal recognition to their land.

Cover photo:  The Cop30 conference will take place in turbulent times. Photograph: Eraldo Peres/AP