UN: Pakistan floods caused by ‘monsoon on steroids

UN Secretary General António Guterres on Tuesday warned that the world is “sleepwalking” into environmental destruction, as he launched a flash $160 million appeal for flood-ravaged Pakistan.

More than 1,100 people have been killed and 33 million others impacted in one of the country’s worst monsoon seasons in over a decade.”The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids — the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding,” Guterres said during the appeal’s launch.

“As we continue to see more and more extreme weather events around the world, it is outrageous that climate action is being put on the back burner as global emissions of greenhouse gases are still rising, putting all of us — everywhere — in growing danger,” he said.”Let’s stop sleepwalking towards the destruction of our planet by climate change,” Guterres, who is scheduled to travel to Pakistan on September 9 for a “solidarity visit,” said. “Today, it’s Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.”

Images of water gushing down streets, swallowing villages and destroying bridges serve as a stark reminder of the inequities of the climate crisis, which impacts the developing world disproportionately.

Richer countries also bear a much larger historical responsibility for the crisis in the first place.Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Tuesday the current flooding in Pakistan has been “the worst in the country’s history.”