NEW YORK: Increasingly concerned world leaders are under pressure to step up efforts to fight climate change. There’s more coming this week about it in one of the highest profile forums of all – the United Nations.
For the second time in four days, this time outside the United Nations Headquarters in New York, leaders called for deeper cuts in emissions of heat-trapping gases and more money to help poor countries develop clean energy and adapt to the country’s deteriorating impacts. Will hear arguments. Climate change.
“I am not desperate, but I am very worried,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Associated Press in a weekend interview. “We are on the verge of the abyss and we cannot take a step in the wrong direction.”
So on Monday Guterres and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom boris johnson In six weeks Scotland is hosting a closed-door session with 35 to 40 world leaders to ask countries to do more for the huge climate talks. Those talks in the fall are designed to make the next step after the 2015 Paris climate accord.
And it all comes after the Friday, when the US President Joe Biden A private forum on climate was set up to persuade leaders to take action now.
“We are rapidly running out of time,” Guterres said on Biden’s podium. The talks in Glasgow “have a high risk of failure”.
This week’s focus on climate change is another summer of extreme weather-related disasters including devastating wildfires in the western United States, deadly flooding in the US, China and Europe, a deluge of killer tropical cyclones around the world and unprecedented heat waves comes at the end. everywhere.
Any breakthrough in emissions-cutting promises or funding during the week of the UN session would pave the way for an agreement in Glasgow, as was the case in early 2015 announcements of pollution sanctions, particularly from China. And from the United States, said the expert. Now those two nations are important again. But, Guterres said, their relationship “completely sucks.”
Nigel Purvis, a former US State Department climate negotiator and CEO of private firm Climate Advisors, said the political forces moving to Glasgow do not look as optimistic as they did after the Biden virtual climate summit four months ago.
But, he says, there is still hope. Countries such as China, the world’s top carbon emitter, must strengthen their Paris promises to cut carbon pollution, while rich countries such as the United States have increased their emissions promises, giving them more financial incentives to help poor countries. definitely needs to be done.
“The Glasgow meeting is not preparing as politically as it was at the 2015 Paris conference,” Purvis said. And Pete OgdenThe vice president of the United Nations Foundation for Energy and Climate cited “worrying mistrust among nations at a time when greater solidarity is needed.”
As world leaders gather, activists, other government leaders and business executives gather in New York City for Climate Week, a massive cheerleading session for action that coincides with a high-level United Nations meeting. And throughout the week the emphasis is on rich countries, the G20, to do more.
“It is true that the G-20 countries bear the largest share of responsibility for carbon emissions. And in this regard, it is certainly absolutely vital that we see them intensifying their actions in a very significant way,” head of the united nations climate conference Patricia Espinosa said on Friday that his agency announced that emissions pledges for the Scotland convention were falling far short of Paris targets.
The harshest one since pre-industrial times seeks to limit warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). It has now dropped to about 0.4 °C (0.7 °F) because of the warming it has already done.
A UN report on Friday showed that current pledges to cut carbon emissions have propelled the world toward 2.7 °C (4.9 °F) of warming since the pre-industrial era. It also goes beyond the weak Paris goal of limiting warming to 2 °C (3.6 °F).
“It’s devastating,” Guterres said in the interview. “The world could not keep up with a 2.7 degree increase in temperature.”
The overall goal is to have “net zero” carbon emissions by the middle of the 21st century. It refers to the moment when the world’s economies are putting the same amount of carbon dioxide into the air as plants and oceans take out of it, thus not increasing global warming.
Guterres is pushing rich countries to keep their promise of $100 billion in climate aid annually to poor countries, at least half of which would help them cope with the effects of global warming. According to a new study by Oxfam, the world is facing a deficit of about $ 75 billion annually. Dealing with the effects of climate change fell 25% last year for small island nations, “for those most vulnerable”, he said.
Under the Paris Agreement, every five years the world’s countries must come up with even more stringent emissions cuts and more money to develop clean energy systems for poorer countries and to adapt to climate change.
While leaders call for UN meetings, activists, business leaders and lower-level government officials will be part of the cheerleading in a “Climate Week” series of events. Planners include big-name corporations that announce commitments worth billions of dollars to fight climate change, lots of talk from big names like Bill Gates about climate solutions, and even all seven late American talk show hosts focus on climate change Wednesday night.
“You have world leaders, and so you can remind them about the climate and make them focus on it,” he said. Helen Clarkson, CEO of The Climate Group, which is coordinating Climate Week.
What matters most is what happens in Glasgow in six weeks Jonathan OverpeckDean of the Environment at the University of Michigan, “but”, he said, “the more quickly that can be agreed, the easier it will be to achieve the commitments needed to end climate change. not on a path that is safe for our planet and its people.”
For the second time in four days, this time outside the United Nations Headquarters in New York, leaders called for deeper cuts in emissions of heat-trapping gases and more money to help poor countries develop clean energy and adapt to the country’s deteriorating impacts. Will hear arguments. Climate change.
“I am not desperate, but I am very worried,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Associated Press in a weekend interview. “We are on the verge of the abyss and we cannot take a step in the wrong direction.”
So on Monday Guterres and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom boris johnson In six weeks Scotland is hosting a closed-door session with 35 to 40 world leaders to ask countries to do more for the huge climate talks. Those talks in the fall are designed to make the next step after the 2015 Paris climate accord.
And it all comes after the Friday, when the US President Joe Biden A private forum on climate was set up to persuade leaders to take action now.
“We are rapidly running out of time,” Guterres said on Biden’s podium. The talks in Glasgow “have a high risk of failure”.
This week’s focus on climate change is another summer of extreme weather-related disasters including devastating wildfires in the western United States, deadly flooding in the US, China and Europe, a deluge of killer tropical cyclones around the world and unprecedented heat waves comes at the end. everywhere.
Any breakthrough in emissions-cutting promises or funding during the week of the UN session would pave the way for an agreement in Glasgow, as was the case in early 2015 announcements of pollution sanctions, particularly from China. And from the United States, said the expert. Now those two nations are important again. But, Guterres said, their relationship “completely sucks.”
Nigel Purvis, a former US State Department climate negotiator and CEO of private firm Climate Advisors, said the political forces moving to Glasgow do not look as optimistic as they did after the Biden virtual climate summit four months ago.
But, he says, there is still hope. Countries such as China, the world’s top carbon emitter, must strengthen their Paris promises to cut carbon pollution, while rich countries such as the United States have increased their emissions promises, giving them more financial incentives to help poor countries. definitely needs to be done.
“The Glasgow meeting is not preparing as politically as it was at the 2015 Paris conference,” Purvis said. And Pete OgdenThe vice president of the United Nations Foundation for Energy and Climate cited “worrying mistrust among nations at a time when greater solidarity is needed.”
As world leaders gather, activists, other government leaders and business executives gather in New York City for Climate Week, a massive cheerleading session for action that coincides with a high-level United Nations meeting. And throughout the week the emphasis is on rich countries, the G20, to do more.
“It is true that the G-20 countries bear the largest share of responsibility for carbon emissions. And in this regard, it is certainly absolutely vital that we see them intensifying their actions in a very significant way,” head of the united nations climate conference Patricia Espinosa said on Friday that his agency announced that emissions pledges for the Scotland convention were falling far short of Paris targets.
The harshest one since pre-industrial times seeks to limit warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). It has now dropped to about 0.4 °C (0.7 °F) because of the warming it has already done.
A UN report on Friday showed that current pledges to cut carbon emissions have propelled the world toward 2.7 °C (4.9 °F) of warming since the pre-industrial era. It also goes beyond the weak Paris goal of limiting warming to 2 °C (3.6 °F).
“It’s devastating,” Guterres said in the interview. “The world could not keep up with a 2.7 degree increase in temperature.”
The overall goal is to have “net zero” carbon emissions by the middle of the 21st century. It refers to the moment when the world’s economies are putting the same amount of carbon dioxide into the air as plants and oceans take out of it, thus not increasing global warming.
Guterres is pushing rich countries to keep their promise of $100 billion in climate aid annually to poor countries, at least half of which would help them cope with the effects of global warming. According to a new study by Oxfam, the world is facing a deficit of about $ 75 billion annually. Dealing with the effects of climate change fell 25% last year for small island nations, “for those most vulnerable”, he said.
Under the Paris Agreement, every five years the world’s countries must come up with even more stringent emissions cuts and more money to develop clean energy systems for poorer countries and to adapt to climate change.
While leaders call for UN meetings, activists, business leaders and lower-level government officials will be part of the cheerleading in a “Climate Week” series of events. Planners include big-name corporations that announce commitments worth billions of dollars to fight climate change, lots of talk from big names like Bill Gates about climate solutions, and even all seven late American talk show hosts focus on climate change Wednesday night.
“You have world leaders, and so you can remind them about the climate and make them focus on it,” he said. Helen Clarkson, CEO of The Climate Group, which is coordinating Climate Week.
What matters most is what happens in Glasgow in six weeks Jonathan OverpeckDean of the Environment at the University of Michigan, “but”, he said, “the more quickly that can be agreed, the easier it will be to achieve the commitments needed to end climate change. not on a path that is safe for our planet and its people.”
.