This is The Guardian.

COP 30 is approaching.

This year's UN Climate Conference will be hosted by Brazil, home to the Amazon rainforest.

And it's going to be a big one.

Every five years, countries have to submit evidence

of how they plan to keep the world below dangerous levels of warming,

known as their nationally determined contributions.

And basically, everyone is way off track.

The person marshalling all the countries, trying to extract meaningful plans and promises,

is UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. We all agree that we must keep temperature rise below 1.5 degrees, that going above 1.5 degrees has devastating

consequences.

As ever, he has been sounding the alarm.

Some of these devastating consequences are tipping points, be it in the Amazon,

be it in Grandland or Western

Antarctica or the coral reefs.

And setting out what we can expect if action on climate remains woefully inadequate.

We don't want to see the Amazon as a savanna.

But that is a real risk if we don't change course and if we don't take a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible.

So today I sit down with the Guardian's global environment editor, John Watts,

to find out what we can expect from COP 30 and where the UN Secretary General thinks we're going wrong.

From The Guardian, I'm Madeleine Finley, and this is Science Weekly.

John, you recently secured an exclusive interview with the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, in the run up to COP 30, which begins next week.

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