World's 'addiction to coal' has to be overcome as a key step in resolving climate change worries, says UN Secretary General

The UN Secretary General is in the Thai capital to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit.

Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand together founded ASEAN in 1967 while Brunei Darussalam (1984), Viet Nam (1995), Lao PDR and Myanmar (1997), and Cambodia (1999) joined later.

Talking to the media during his visit to a climate mitigation project in Bangkok's new Centenary Park on Saturday,  Guterres said most countries most vulnerable to flooding due to climate change are in Southeast Asia, in Japan, China, Bangladesh and India, and hence it is for these countries to be in the front line of carbon pricing, of stopping subsidies to fossil fuels, and of stopping the construction of coal power electricity plants in order to be able to defeat climate change.

He said that the ASEAN Summit has sustainability as its main issue for discussion.

"And the biggest threat to sustainability today in the world is climate change," said the Secretar general.

Referring to a recently published report, he said, "The level of the oceans is rising much faster than what was forecasted because of climate change. According to this new report, unless we are able to reverse this trend, because climate change for the moment is running faster than what we are, unless we are able to defeat climate change, in 2050 the research has forecasted that 300 million people will be flooded by sea water in the world."

"That is why we are deeply committed," said the UN Chief, "deeply committed to raise attention to governments, to the business community, to the civil society, to local authorities, to the needs to abide by what scientists tell us is necessary to do and what science tell us is that we need to contain the rising temperatures 1.5 degrees until the end of the century. And for that to be possible, we need to be carbon neutral in 2050 and reduce the emissions by 45% in the next decade."

The UN Secretary General also talked about the importance of political commitments to mitigate the issues surrounding climate change.

"We have to put a price on carbon," he said, "We need to stop subsidies for fossil fuels. And we need to stop the creation of new power plants based on coal in the future. And this question is particularly sensitive in this part of the world because there is still a meaningful number of new coal power plants for electricity production that is foreseen in the future in East Asia, in Southeast Asia and in South Asia."

He said, the world's addiction to coal has to be overcome because it remains a major threat in relation to climate change and one of the messages in the summit will be very clearly that countries in these areas need to give an example as to how climate change can be brought under control.