The United Nations has abandoned all climate targets and installed a single communal thermostat at its New York headquarters, set permanently to 2.8 degrees, with a ceremonial dial that Donald Trump has been invited to turn at a live ceremony next Thursday.
The thermostat, a wall-mounted brass unit the size of a garage door, was unveiled by the UN climate secretariat after its latest report found the world drifting toward that exact figure. Rather than adjust policy, the secretariat adjusted the appliance. «We are no longer forecasting the temperature,» a senior UN climate official said. «We are displaying it. The dial is now the policy.»
Trump has accepted the invitation and will turn the dial one notch clockwise, then hold it there for the cameras while describing the thermostat as the greatest deal ever negotiated. «Nobody knew thermostats could be this big,» he said in a statement. «I looked at it. I said, that's a beautiful dial. We're going to keep it right there.»
Delegates from nearly every member state have since queued in the lobby to touch the casing for luck, and the UN has begun issuing commemorative brass keyrings shaped like the dial. A second, smaller thermostat is being installed in Geneva for visitors who cannot reach New York, and the secretariat has confirmed that the 2.6-degree setting will remain available on request for anyone who asks politely.