Guterres highlights human cost of climate change
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 November 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The UN chief, Antonio Guterres, has told the COP climate summit in Azerbaijan that to double down on the use of fossil fuels is "absurd" and that the "clean energy revolution" has arrived. However, the host, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev, described his country's reserves of oil and gas as "a gift from God". We speak to a woman in Canada's Nova Scotia province whose six-year-old son was killed by flash floods linked to climate change.
Also in the programme: the leader of the Anglican Church - the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby - has resigned, after a report found he failed to do enough to stop a prolific child abuser; and the female magician who tricked her way into Britain's all-male Magic Circle club, but who has since disappeared.
(Picture: People embrace as they stand near damage to a road, after the heaviest rain to hit the Canadian province of Nova Scotia in more than 50 years triggered floods on July 23, 2023. Credit: REUTERS/John Morris)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour live from the BBC World Service in London. I'm Rebecca Kesb. |
| 0:09.5 | Let's start the programme in Azerbaijan, which is hosting the annual UN Climate Conference, COP 29 in Baku this week. |
| 0:16.9 | Heads of state have been meeting there today. When Petro-State, Azerbaijan was declared the host of this summit, there were some raised eyebrows and even some anger among environmentalists that the country has made public its plan to expand gas production by up to a third over the next decade, just as the function of the COP summit is to drive down |
| 0:40.0 | reliance on fossil fuels and to slash CO2 emissions. |
| 0:44.1 | Well, the first leader to speak today was President Aleyev of Azerbaijan, and he said countries |
| 0:50.4 | shouldn't be blamed for wanting to use natural resources like oil and gas, |
| 0:55.2 | not exactly the message many environmentalists wanted to hear. |
| 0:59.6 | It's a gift of the God. Every natural resource, |
| 1:02.4 | with this oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, all that are natural resources. |
| 1:13.6 | And countries should not be blamed for having them |
| 1:16.6 | and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market |
| 1:21.3 | because the market needs them, the people need them. |
| 1:26.1 | Well, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had strong words on the human cost of the climate crisis and the urgency of action. |
| 1:36.1 | This is almost certain to be the hottest here on records. |
| 1:41.4 | And the master class in climate destruction. |
| 1:45.0 | Fabulous running for their lives before the next hurricane strikes. |
| 1:51.0 | Biodiversity destroyed in sweltering seas. |
| 1:55.0 | Workers and pilgrims and pilgrims collapsing in un-sufferable heat. |
| 2:00.0 | Floods tearing through communities and tearing down infrastructure. |
| 2:04.6 | The BBC's Environment Correspondent Matt McGraw is at the Climate Summit in Baku. |
| 2:10.5 | So there seems to be mixed messages today coming from the leaders in Baku. |
| 2:15.0 | Does that signal problems ahead for the summit? |
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