United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres held his end-of-year press conference at UN headquarters in New York on December 19th. “There may be plenty of reasons for despair,” he told reporters. Nevertheless, he said, “despite the limitations and long odds, we are working to push back against despair, to fight back against disillusion and to find real solutions.”
Secretary General Guterres called for yet another climate summit to be held next September, which he named the Climate Ambition Summit. This time must be different, he insisted. “It will be a no-nonsense summit,” the Secretary General declared. “No exceptions. No compromises. There will be no room for back-sliders, greenwashers, blame-shifters or repackaging of announcements of previous years.”