The United Nations’ Secretary-General, António Guterres, organized a special summit in New York City to spotlight global leaders who are actively addressing climate change, while implicitly highlighting those who are lagging behind.
Guterres, who has made climate action a central part of his agenda and urged major carbon emitters to swiftly transition away from fossil fuels, declared that only high-level leaders demonstrating serious commitment to climate action would be permitted to speak at the event.
In his opening remarks, Guterres emphasized the urgency of addressing climate change, stating, “Climate action is dwarfed by the scale of the challenge. We must make up time lost to foot-dragging, arm-twisting, and the naked greed of entrenched interests profiting from fossil fuels.”
The summit, called the “Climate Ambition Summit”, was held alongside the annual General Assembly meeting. It included leaders from countries, states, cities, and companies. However, it coincided with a U.N. Security Council meeting on the Ukraine conflict, which has dominated the General Assembly’s agenda for a second year in a row.
This event was a response to growing frustration among smaller and less affluent countries that wealthier nations have been distracted by the Ukraine crisis from their commitments to help developing nations address climate risks and transition to renewable energy.
While emphasizing ambition, the summit resulted in few new concrete commitments. Some European Union countries and Canada pledged to allocate more of their budgets to climate finance for the developing world or redirect special access to funds from international lending institutions to poorer nations.
Of the world’s four biggest emitters, only the European Union was invited to speak at the summit. Top leaders from China and India, which are also the world’s most populous countries, did not attend the United Nations or climate meetings this week.
The only U.S. representative invited to speak was Governor Gavin Newsom of California, known for implementing numerous climate measures and recently announcing a lawsuit against Big Oil, accusing the industry of disinformation campaigns. Newsom’s speech, which directly addressed fossil fuel producers, received the most applause.
“This climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis. It’s not complicated,” he said. “It’s the burning of oil, the burning of gas, the burning of coal. We need to call that out. For decades, the oil industry has been playing each and everyone in this room for fools. Their deceit and denial going back decades has created the conditions that persist here today.”
The summit serves as a precursor to the annual United Nations climate talks (COP), scheduled to begin in a little over two months in the United Arab Emirates. The Emirates’ significant fossil fuel production has raised concerns about the credibility of the COP meetings, which have struggled to build consensus on critical climate issues in recent years.
This year’s COP must address a report, commissioned by the COP itself, which warns that current climate pledges could lead to a dangerous global average temperature increase of 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 if nations fail to follow through.
The window to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a widely recognized climate goal, is rapidly closing, according to the report.
Despite the visible costs of climate inaction, many speakers at the summit expressed some hopefulness, even as they acknowledged the mounting climate-induced emergencies worldwide. Some of the most compelling calls for action came from leaders like President Gabriel Boric of Chile, who emphasized the need for relentless pressure on laggards, including fossil fuel companies and nations reluctant to transition away from fossil fuels.
