A shocking warning on day one of Cop28 – we cannot allow the world to be destroyed by global warming. We must act now

Editorial: As global leaders gather in Dubai, the World Meteorological Organization confirms what has been apparent for some time – that 2023 is going to be the warmest year since records began. The obvious and urgent need now is for action

Cop28 president Sultan al-Jaber addresses the climate summit in Dubai on Thursday (AP)

The warnings from the scientists could hardly be more stark. Life on Earth is in danger and time is running out.

As global leaders gather for the Cop28 summit in Dubai, the World Meteorological Organization confirms what has been apparent for some time – that 2023 is going to be the warmest year since records began. A shock, when the true enormity of it is taken in, but perhaps no great surprise in the context of the increasingly common freak weather observed around the world in recent times – floods in the Libyan desert, Siberian forests on fire, and biblical droughts in Australia and Africa. One of the many dangers of creeping, seemingly inexorable global warming is that the public becomes inured to the constant warnings – and shrugs in the face of extreme weather events that would have been impossible in the pre-industrial era. Like the frog in the saucepan of boiling water, we are sometimes oblivious to our worryingly changed world.

All the more reason, then, for the Cop (“Conference of Parties” to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) to convene, and to do so in the Gulf, the major export source of fossil fuels. The facts of climate change are clear; the obvious and urgent need now is for action. The public may be inured to bad news about the environment – but that is precisely because they understand what is going on and accept the science.