Outgoing UN chief makes final climate push at New York summit

Antonio Guterres, the outgoing UN chief, used his final climate meeting at the UN headquarters in New York to emphasize the unstoppable growth of renewable energy and the need for countries to devise concrete plans to abandon fossil fuels. After denouncing Big Oil for treating the atmosphere like an open sewer, Guterres, speaking a day after his address, called renewables the cheapest, fastest, and most secure source of new electricity almost everywhere.

He urged countries to raise their emissions reduction targets and release plans to quit fossil fuels, emphasizing that the current generation is the first with the tools to end the fossil fuel age and the last who can avert climate catastrophe. Notably, Germany, Europe's largest economy, issued its roadmap for climate action just hours before Guterres' speech, becoming the third country to do so after France and the Netherlands.

Guterres, hailed by the Union of Concerned Scientists as an extraordinary climate champion, concluded his speech by stating that it's now up to the leaders to act on the pledges made.