'Save your species': UN uses dinosaur in fossil fuel message

BERLIN — The United Nations is summoning an antithetic “witness” to attest to the dangers of burning fossil fuels that stoke planetary warming: a dinosaur.

In a video released connected societal media up of this year’s U.N. climate alteration summit, a computer-generated dinosaur bursts into the U.N.’s celebrated General Assembly hallway successful New York to archer satellite diplomats that “going extinct is simply a atrocious thing.”

The light-hearted clip, voiced successful the English mentation by histrion Jack Black, carries a superior connection that the U.N. Development Programme hopes to thrust home.

“You’re headed for a clime disaster,” the dinosaur proclaims. “And yet each year, governments walk hundreds of billions of nationalist funds connected fossil substance subsidies. Imagine if we had spent hundreds of billions per twelvemonth subsidizing elephantine meteors.”

In an accompanying study released Wednesday, the U.N. bureau says its probe shows that the satellite spends much than 4 times arsenic overmuch each year, astir $423 billion, to subsidize fossil fuels for consumers than it does to assistance mediocre countries tackle planetary warming.

The fig doesn’t see the indirect costs of burning oil, ember and gas, specified arsenic the harm fossil substance emissions bash to the situation and quality health.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly called for an extremity to subsidies connected fossil fuels, thing galore governments are wary of due to the fact that of fears higher prices could spark societal unrest.

The caput of the U.N. Development Programme, Achim Steiner, acknowledged that reforming the strategy of fossil substance subsidies would not beryllium casual and mightiness look antithetic successful each country.

“But we besides cognize that we indispensable determination distant from these vigor sources that are contributing to our planet’s decline,” helium said. “Ending fiscal enactment for them successful a mode that is just and equitable is simply a captious constituent of that transition.”