Guterres accuses oil companies of spreading the big lie against climate change

The General secretary of the UN intervened this Wednesday before the World Economic Fund, which is held in the Swiss city of Davos, to expose the “unfortunate” State of the World without sugarcoating it.

“We cannot face problems unless we look them square in the eye. And we are looking into the eye of a Category 5 hurricane. Our world is ravaged by a perfect storm on several fronts,” said António Guterres.

Among other topics, he addressed the war in Ukraine, climate change, the danger of an East-West fracture and the great divide between the Global North and South.

On the war in Ukraine, he assured that he does not believe there is an opportunity to organize “a serious peace negotiation” between the parties to the conflict in Ukraine, almost a year after the large-scale invasion of Russia.

Following this assessment, Guterres made it clear that he also remains committed to alleviating the suffering of Ukrainians and vulnerable people in the rest of the world, who are still reeling from the “dramatic and devastating impact” of the conflict on the global economy.

“There will be an end (…) there is an end to everything, but I don’t see the end of the war in the immediate future. I do not see the possibility at this moment of having a serious peace negotiation between the two parties,” he commented before the World Economic Forum that is being held in the Swiss city of Davos.

worlds apart

Reiterating that the Russian invasion of February 24 violated international law and the UN charterthe Secretary General emphasized the difficulty of ending the violence when the two parties continue to have “two different ideas about what the Russian empire was, and what the nationalities are”.

And he added: “This makes it more difficult to find a solution; a solution that needs to be based on international law and respect territorial integrity (…) I don’t see conditions for that to happen in the immediate future”.

With the Ukrainian and Russian fighters locked in a war of attrition, Guterres insisted that the UN had nonetheless helped garner support from kyiv and Moscow to send desperately needed grain and fertilizer to countries facing spiraling into food insecurity or trying to avoid it.

To date, 17.8 million tons of commodities have been shipped under the Black Sea Grain Initiative to countries such as Afghanistan, China, Israel, Kenya and Tunisia, with corn, wheat, flour and sunflower oil being the items that have been delivered in the largest quantities.

The UN committed to peace

The UN has also maintained contacts with Ukrainian and Russian representatives on other contentious issues in the interest of peace, the Secretary General insisted.

This includes discussing the prisoner of war exchange with both parties and support for the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the United Nations in its efforts to protect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the rest of the power plants in the country.

Guided by the double principle of international law and territorial integrity, “we are doing everything we can (…) to limit damage and reduce suffering,” Guterres said.

Reminder of the climate crisis

In a far-reaching address to world leaders in Davos, ranging from the East-West divide, with a possible decoupling of the Chinese and US economies, to the growing disconnect between the Global South and the Global North, the Secretary-General of the UN made a new call to world leaders not to ignore the climate crisis.

“Every week we get a new climate horror story,” he said, calling on industrialized countries to “Fulfill” your commitment to deliver $100 billion in climate finance to support developing countries.

“Greenhouse gas emissions are at record levels and continue to grow. The commitment to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees is about to fizzle out. Without further action, we are heading for a 2.8 degree rise” of the Earth’s average temperature.

Unless tough political decisions are made to deal with the climate crisis, Guterres warned that many countries will be sentenced to “a death sentence.”

The private sector also needs to do more to help the climate, he insisted, before calling on business leaders attending Davos to abide by the guidelines to reach the net zero carbon emissions endorsed by the UNand not to “dubious or shady” reference points.

“If the conditions are not created for the massive participation of the private sector, it will be impossible to go from the billions to the trillions that are needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”, maintained the Secretary General.

Mountain communities in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, including the Mustang municipality in Nepal, are already feeling the effects of biodiversity loss, increased glacial melt and reduced water availability.

Challenge of the “big oil companies”

The UN high mandate also touched on the major producers of fossil fuels, highlighting recent revelations that some “were fully aware that in the 1970s their main product was baking” the planet.

“Some members of the big oil companies propagated the big lie,” continued the UN president, “but we know that the sinking of the ecosystem is a cold, hard, scientific fact.

In a call for greater international cooperation and trust-building to resolve so many interrelated issues, Guterres warned that divisions between the United States and China risk decoupling the world’s two largest economies.

Such a division – whose cost to the world economy has been estimated at 1.4 trillion dollars per the International Monetary Fund– would result in “two different sets of business rules, two dominant currencies, two internet and two competing strategies on artificial intelligence. This is the last thing we need,” said the Secretary-General.

And while it is to be expected that US-China relations will differ on human rights and security issues, it is essential that both continue to engage meaningfully on climate, trade and technology, “to avoid decoupling the economies or even the possibility of a future confrontation“.

Civil society activists protest against the exploitation of oil and gas in Africa.

North-South Division

The UN president also warned that the North-South divide “is deepening”, due to “frustration and anger over the great inequality in the distribution of vaccines in the recent past (and) due to the recovery from the pandemic “, during which support had been seen to be “overwhelmingly concentrated in the richest countries that could print money.”

Trillions of dollars had been printed in the global North, Guterres explained, while developing countries “couldn’t print money because their coins would go down the drain“.

The Global South is also being hurt by the climate crisis, despite contributing the least to global warming. In addition, it does not have the financial resources to respond to the challenge, the UN president continued.

Reiterating his call to the multilateral development banks to “change their business model”, the Secretary General explained that what emerging countries really need is access to a “massive influx of private financing at reasonable interest rates”.

“International financial institutions are too small and their ability to increase the capacity of international Official Development Assistance is not seen in the short term,” he said.