ROME (Dispatches) -- As the World Leaders Summit opened on day two of COP26 on Monday, UN chief António Guterres sent a stark message to the international community.
“We are digging our own graves”, he said, referring to the addiction to fossil fuels which threatens to push humanity and the planet, to the brink, through unsustainable global heating.
It was a grey and windy morning, as dozens of world leaders arrived at the Scottish Event Campus, of the key United Nations climate conference, in the city of Glasgow.
In a hard-hitting speech opening the COP26 climate summit, Guterres said humanity must stop treating nature “like a toilet”. He said “addiction” to fossil fuels was “pushing humanity to the brink”.
The former Portuguese prime minister warned that current commitments by the nations attending the conference were not enough to avert catastrophe.
“We are still heading for climate disaster,” he said. “Recent climate action announcements might give the impression that we are on track to turn things around. This is an illusion.”
He told the audience of world leaders: “Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: Either we stop it — or it stops us.
“It’s time to say: enough. Enough of brutalizing biodiversity. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon. Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper,” said Guterres, adding: “We are digging our own graves.”
Guterres added: “The last published report on Nationally Determined Contributions showed that they would still condemn the world to a calamitous 2.7 degree increase.
“And even if the recent pledges were clear and credible — and there are serious questions about some of them — we are still careening towards climate catastrophe. Even in the best-case scenario, temperatures will rise well above two degrees.”
He also pointed out that the years since the last crucial COP summit in Paris 2015 “have been the six hottest years on record”.
Leaders have gathered in Glasgow with the aim of thrashing out national contributions to the fight against carbon emissions – but scientists are skeptical they will go far enough to hit crucial targets.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a keynote speech at the opening of the meeting on Monday in which he warned that future generations would react with anger if leaders did not turn the situation around.

With a little over 1C of warming since the Industrial Revolution, Earth is being battered by ever more extreme heatwaves, flooding and tropical storms supercharged by rising seas.
U.S. President Joe Biden, addressing delegates, said that the current age of climate disaster was “an inflection point in world history”.
Pressure is on governments to redouble their emissions-cutting commitments to bring them in line with the Paris goals, and to stump up long-promised cash to help developing nations green their grids and protect themselves against future disasters.
Thousands of delegates queued around the block to get into the summit on Monday, negotiating airport-style security in the locked-down city centre.
On nearby streets, protesters began lively demonstrations to keep up the pressure.
Activists from Oxfam communicated their displeasure through music, with a Scottish pipe band, the “COP26 Hot Air Band”, wearing masks that caricatured world leaders.
Echoing 18-year-old climate campaigner Greta Thunberg -- who is in Glasgow with thousands of other protesters -- Johnson urged the summit against indulging in “blah blah blah”.
But the precise pathway to 1.5C was left largely undefined and campaigners expressed disappointment with the group, which collectively emits nearly 80 percent of global carbon emissions.
Preparations for the high-level summit had been dampened by a number of high-profile no shows.
Both Chinese President Xi Jinping -- who has not left his country during the Covid-19 pandemic -- and Russia’s Vladimir Putin will not be in Glasgow.
And Monday saw Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan cancel his appearance, for unspecified reasons.
Observers say the Glasgow gathering, which runs until November 12, will be tough going.
Most nations have already submitted their renewed emissions cutting plans -- known as “nationally determined contributions”, or NDCs -- in advance of COP26.
But even these current commitments -- if followed -- would still lead to a “catastrophic” warming of 2.7 Celsius, according to the UN.