As we enter the month of June, scorching temperatures are already making deadly heat waves around the world. Data confirmed last month was the hottest May on record, putting the Earth on a 12-month streak of record-breaking temperatures. On Wednesday, the World Meteorological Organization announced there is an 80% chance the average global temperature will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels for at least one of the next five years. “We’re going to see a more chaotic planet as the climate heats up,” says Jeff Goodell, a journalist covering the climate crisis. Goodell describes “the heat wave scenario that keeps climate scientists up at night”: a major power outage that could cut off air conditioning and cause thousands of deaths from extreme temperatures.
In Mexico, it’s already so hot that howler monkeys and parrots are falling dead from the trees. “What we’re experiencing right now goes beyond what is normal,” says Ruth Cerezo-Mota, climate researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “We have been saying this for many years now.”
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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Deadly heat. As we enter the month of June, scorching temperatures are already gripping parts of Arizona, California, Nevada, as well as countries around the world. In Arizona, extreme heat sent 11 people to the hospital as thousands waited to enter a campaign rally with Donald Trump. In India, 33 poll workers died from heatstroke on a single day last week during India’s national elections. In Mexico, it’s so hot, howler monkeys are falling dead from the trees. Data confirmed last month was the hottest May on record, putting the Earth on a 12-month streak of record-scorching and -breaking temperatures.
Meanwhile, a new report has found the rate Earth is warming hit an all-time high last year, with 92% of 2023 record heat caused by humans. On Wednesday, the World Meteorological Organization announced there’s an 80% chance the average global temperature will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels for at least one of the next five years.
On the same day that report was released, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres gave a major speech on the climate crisis right next to the dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History here in New York City. The U.N. secretary-general said the world can still meet the 1.5-degree target if governments drastically speed up the phaseout of fossil fuels.
SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: Today is World Environment Day. It is also the day that the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service officially reports May 2024 as the hottest May in recorded history. This marks 12 straight months of the hottest months ever. For the past year, every turn of the calendar has turned up the heat. Our planet is trying to tell us something, but we don’t seem to be listening.
Dear friends, the American Museum of Natural History is the ideal place to make the point. This great museum tells the amazing story of our natural world, of the vast forces that have shaped life on Earth over billions of years. And humanity is just one small blip on the radar. But like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, we are having an outsized impact. In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger. But we are also the solution.
So, dear friends, we are at a moment of truth. The truth is, almost 10 years since the Paris Agreement was adopted, the target of limiting long-term global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is hanging by a thread. The truth is, the world is spewing emissions so fast that by 2030 a far higher temperature rise will be all but guaranteed.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in a major address on the climate crisis Wednesday to mark World Environment Day. Again, he was speaking at the Museum of Natural History here in New York.
For more on deadly heat and the climate crisis, we’re joined by two guests. Dr. Ruth Cerezo-Mota is a researcher at the Institute of Engineering at UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She is joining us from the city of Mérida in the Mexican state of Yucatán. And joining us from North Carolina, Jeff Goodell. He’s covered the climate crisis for over 20 years at Rolling Stone magazine, the author of The New York Times best-seller, The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. He’s got a new op-ed in The New York Times, “The Heat........