Putin's war is a catastrophe - for the people in Ukraine, but also for the world climate.

Because it reinforces the impression that the world urgently needs replacements for Russian oil, gas and coal from other parts of the world should the West impose a total energy embargo on Putin.

It's the old story: we can't do without fossil fuels if the wheels don't stand still and the poor aren't supposed to get even poorer.

At the same time, as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has now made clear in a speech to the international community, nothing would be more damaging and shameful than continuing to spin this story.

In New York, Guterres commented on the last of three parts of the IPCC's sixth assessment report without mincing his words, even if his performance threatened to be lost in view of the horrific images from Butscha.

He called the climate scientists' balance sheet a "catalog of shame" for humanity, because all national promises so far have not brought us any closer to saving the climate.

The dangerous radicals, according to Guterres, are not the activists who want to save the earth's climate, but those countries and companies that continue to produce oil, gas and coal as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

The clarity of the UN chief rhetorically reflects the seriousness of the situation, which is relentlessly described in the three times three thousand pages of the sixth IPCC assessment report: The world is light years away from bringing the climate back into balance!

Still, she is hopeful.

Or rather, it is pumped full of hopes of being able to turn things around.

Also from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change itself.

The emissions turnaround must be achieved by 2025

The goal is: a maximum of 1.5 to two degrees of warming compared to pre-industrial times.

Anything above that would melt the poles faster and sink the coasts faster.

Millions upon millions of people would die from natural disasters, and nature would be exposed to unimaginable stress.

Preventing this from happening requires an almost superhuman effort: not tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow, but in the next three years – by 2025 – the emissions turnaround must be achieved.

"It's now or never," in the words of the IPCC.

In eight years, in 2030, the enrichment of the air with exhaust gases from gas, oil and coal must be halved and stopped completely by 2050.

Hard to imagine given that we are currently not heading for one and a half or two degrees, but for three degrees of global warming.

Unfortunately, far too few people have understood this drama.

After the publication of this third IPCC partial report, this could also be seen in the way the UN chief's angry speech was treated: with a shrug.

The climate emergency barely made it into the main news.

Everything known, one thought.

The thunder of war drowns out everything, even the loudest distress calls for the planet.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is under feasibility pressure

The almost 300 authors, who evaluated more than 18,000 studies for this third report alone, left little stone unturned to finally disillusion entrepreneurs, laypeople and politicians.

For example, anyone who studies the graph of the emission turnaround scenarios shown in the "Summary for political decision-makers" will have to recognize that the necessary turnaround does not lie in the future, but actually in the past.

In 2009, after publication of the fourth status report, greenhouse gas emissions should have peaked "if possible in six years".

In 2015, when the IPCC report followed, it was five years; today it is only three.

But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has also tried to motivate politicians with "positive narratives" and slogans to persevere in recent years,

The truth is that the world is still heading towards the climate catastrophe with 1.2 degrees of warming and recent record emissions.

And the bitter realization is that even a global energy "Easter package" will not be enough to avert this.

The many possible and effective instruments for radical climate protection are meticulously listed in the IPCC report.

The massive drop in prices and the increase in renewable energy sources are more than just a ray of hope.

But realistically, the turning point is only possible if the addiction to oil, gas and coal is finally defeated.

And with it the old fossil promises powdered with billions in subsidies, fueled by Putin's war in Ukraine.