‘No more hesitancy, no more excuses’: UN says as July heat hits record high worldwide

“Climate change is here. It is terrifying, and it is just the beginning.”

The alarming statement was made by Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, at a press conference on Thursday.

“The era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived,” he said.

Guterres in his speech emphasized the need for world leaders, in particular of rich nations, to do more to cut carbon emissions and transition to renewable energy.

The sobering statement comes just after scientists around the world calculated that July was the hottest month on record and possibly the hottest the Earth’s been for 120,000 years.

Heat waves across North America, Europe and Asia have pushed the average temperatures above the key threshold of 1.5 C multiple days in July, breaking a previous July 2019 record by 0.2 C.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR CANADA

“We need to take action to reduce our exposure and vulnerability to these extreme events,” Gordon McBean, professor of geography and environment at the University of Western Ontario, told CTV’s Your Morning on Friday.

The UN general secretary emphasized the need for action in his statement, which McBean believes “has been delayed for years.”

Canada is warming almost twice the rate of the world average due to its large land mass and polar regions, McBean said.

“The number 2 degrees Celsius is the global average and that includes the areas over the ocean which are not warming as fast as the areas overland,” he said. “The Canadian Arctic areas are warming at three to four times as fast as the global average, and that’s due to these land areas and the fact that the higher latitude regions…will warm much faster than the areas closer to the equator.”

July worldwide is not only breaking records, but in Canada, northern communities have endured “alarming” heat. In some cases, records that have stood for decades have been broken by almost three degrees.

“This is sort of the poster child for climate change,” Jesse Wagar, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada previously told CTVNews.ca. “The rate of the warming in the Arctic is just incredible to watch year over year.”

The effects of the heating planet are evident across Canada as communities endure an unprecedented wildfire season, severe storms and flooding.

“We have to take action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions,” McBean said. “We’ve got to start really taking action as opposed to just talking about it.”

With files from The Associated Press.