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U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called Wednesday for a “windfall” tax on profits of fossil fuel companies to help pay for the fight against global warming, calling them the “godfathers of climate chaos.”
Guterres spoke in a bid to revive the world’s focus on climate change at a time when elections, inflation, and conflict in places like Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan have seized the spotlight.
In a speech timed for World Environment Day, the U.N. chief drew on new data and projections to make a case against Big Oil. The European Union’s Copernicus service, a global reference for tracking world temperatures, said that last month was the hottest May ever, marking the 12th straight monthly record high.
The service cited an average surface air temperature of 15.9 degrees Celsius (60.6 degrees Fahrenheit) last month — 1.52 degrees Celsius higher than the estimated May average before industrial times.
The burning of fossil fuels — oil, gas, and coal — is the main contributor to global warming caused by human activity.
The World Meteorological Organization said the global mean near-surface temperature for each year from 2024 to 2028 is expected to range between 1.
