The UN Secretary-General has delivered a damning assessment of the world’s progress in tackling climate change, calling the collective response "pitiful".
"We are hurtling towards disaster, eyes wide open," Antonio Guterres told reporters.
"It’s time to wake up and step up," he said, adding that countries were far off-track in meeting climate promises and commitments.
He reserved the harshest criticism for the fossil fuel industry whose behaviour he compared to that of Judas Iscariot.
Mr Guterres said: "Last year, the oil and gas industry reaped a record $4 trillion windfall in net income. Yet for every dollar it spends on oil and gas drilling and exploration, only 4c went to clean energy and carbon capture combined."
"Trading the future for thirty pieces of silver is immoral," he said.
Mr Guterres accused governments and companies of backsliding on net zero commitments and invoking anti-trust legislation to undermine environmental protections.
"Fossil fuel companies must also cease and desist influence peddling and legal threats designed to knee-cap progress," he told reporters and called on the industry to invest their huge profits in the development of renewable energy.
This year's COP28 summit, the UN’s annual climate talks, will be held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in November.
But the UN has been sharply criticised by environmental groups for holding the summit in UAE, a major oil and gas producer where it will be chaired by Sultan Al Jaber, managing director of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
Last month, a joint letter, signed by 130 US and European politicians, called on the UN to advocate for the withdrawal of Sultan Al Jaber’s chairmanship.
The UN has said the summit’s host was a matter for member states to decide.
Sultan Al Jaber has been criticised for failing to commit to a "phase-out" of fossil fuels, opting instead to back a "phase-down."
Today, Mr Guterres appeared to add his voice to the criticism of the COP chair’s failure to commit to a phase-out.
"Let’s face facts," he told reporters.
"The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions. It’s fossil fuels – period."
He said that fossil fuel companies must leave oil, coal and gas in the ground "where they belong," and transition to clean energy.
"Otherwise, they are just proposals to become more efficient planet-wreckers," he said.
Concerns over the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists at the UN’s climate talks, held in Egypt last year, led to a change in the registration process for COP28, which now requires a declaration of interest.
Campaigners welcomed the move, which they say will encourage greater transparency.
Mr Guterres told reporters today that "the human rights of climate activists are being trampled on".
Asked by RTÉ News whether he supported direct action on the part of climate activist groups, such as Just Stop Oil, a campaign group that famously threw tomato soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting in London last year, Mr Guterres said he agreed with "all forms of peaceful demonstration and peaceful expression of the need for more effective climate action".
He disagreed with any violent form of activism, he told RTÉ News but appealed to the security forces to "show the necessary restraint" to avoid turning a peaceful demonstration into a regrettable incident.
