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Don't Fiddle While the Planet Burns, UN Chief Warns Climate Summit

Reuters

   MADRID - The world must choose hope over surrender in the fight against
   climate change, U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on Monday,
   warning a summit in Madrid that governments risked sleepwalking past a
   point of no return.

   The latest round of annual negotiations to bolster the 2015 Paris
   Agreement to curb global warming began against a backdrop of unusually
   severe weather disasters this year, from fires in the Arctic, Amazon
   and Australia to intense tropical hurricanes.

   "Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that buried its
   head in the sand, that fiddled while the planet burned?" Guterres told
   the opening session of the two-week gathering, held in a hangar-like
   conference center in the Spanish capital.

   "One is the path of surrender, where we have sleepwalked past the point
   of no return," he said. "The other option is the path of hope. A path
   of resolve, of sustainable solutions."

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