‘Highway to Climate Hell’: UN Secretary-General Calls on World Leaders to Cooperate at COP27

The UN secretary-general told dozens of leaders gathered for an international climate conference on Monday to “cooperate or perish”, warning that the world is on a “highway to climate hell”, warning that two He urged the biggest polluters, China and the United States, to: Work together to avoid.

This year’s annual UN climate conference, known as COP27, came amid growing warnings from leaders and experts that the time to avert catastrophic warming is running out. But due to multiple other current challenges at the attention of leaders, from the US midterm elections to the war between Russia and Ukraine, the fire and brimstone warnings are unlikely to have the same effect as they have at past conferences. may not result in

Over 100 world leaders will speak at a rally in Egypt over the next few days. Much of the focus will be on telling their stories of how the country’s leaders have been devastated by the climate disaster, culminating in a speech by Pakistani Prime Minister Mohammed Sharif on Tuesday. Pakistan’s summer floods have caused at least $40 billion in damages and displaced millions of people.

“Isn’t it time to put an end to all this suffering,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, organizer of the summit, told fellow leaders. “Climate change will never stop without our intervention…Our time here is limited and we must make the most of every second.”

El-Sisi, who called for an end to the Russo-Ukrainian war, was mild compared to the fiery UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who said the world was “stepping into an accelerator and on the road to climate hell.” .

He wants new agreements between rich and poor countries to provide funding and emissions by phasing out coal in rich countries by 2030 and elsewhere by 2040. I asked for a drastic reduction in quantity. We have been working together until the last few years, especially on climate.

“Humanity has a choice: Cooperate or perish,” said Guterres. “It’s either a climate solidarity pact or a collective suicide pact.”

“Today’s impending crisis is no excuse for setbacks or greenwashing,” Guterres argued.

But bad timing and global events hung over the gathering.

Most leaders are meeting on Mondays and Tuesdays, just as there are midterm elections that could change policy in the US. Then the leaders of his 20 nations, the richest in the world, will hold a high-powered club meeting in Bali, Indonesia in a few days.

China and India’s leaders, both among the biggest emitters, seem to be skipping climate talks, but the lower echelons are negotiating here. US President Joe Biden, the leader of the most polluted country, is set to head to Bali days later than most other presidents and prime ministers.

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“We had a big climate summit and a small climate summit, and we weren’t expecting this to be a big one,” said Nigel Purvis, CEO of Climate Advisers, a former US negotiator.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak initially intended to avoid negotiations, but public pressure and the plans of his predecessor Boris Johnson changed his mind. The new King Charles III, a longtime environmental advocate, will not attend due to his new role. And Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whose aggression in Ukraine has caused energy chaos that reverberates in the world of climate change negotiations, won’t be here.

“We always want more,” UN climate chief Simon Steele said at a press conference on Sunday. I believe we have enough[leadership]right now to bring it out.”

In addition to the speeches by the leaders, the negotiations will include an “innovative” roundtable, which “I am sure will yield very strong insights,” Stiel said.

A number of leaders are coming from the host continent of Africa, pressing for greater accountability in the developed world.

“The historical polluters that caused climate change are not showing up,” said Mohamed Adow of Powershift Africa. “Africa is the continent with the least responsibility, the most vulnerable and stepping up to leadership on the issue of climate change.”

“The South is really picking up steam,” Adow told the Associated Press. “Historically troubled North Korea is failing.”

For the first time, developing countries successfully brought the issue of “loss and damage” to the agenda of the summit, demanding that emitting countries pay for damage caused by climate-induced disasters.

Nigeria’s Environment Minister Mohamed Abdullahi has called on rich countries to show “proactive and aggressive” efforts to help countries most affected by climate change. “Our priority is to be proactive when it comes to financing climate change to mitigate the challenges of loss and damage,” he said.

Monday will be largely dominated by the leaders of countries that have fallen victim to climate change, not those that have created problems with heat trap gases that warm the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. , small island nations, and other vulnerable nations will tell their stories.

And the droughts in Africa and the floods in Pakistan, the dramatic ones where the least can afford it. For the first time in 30 years of climate negotiations, David Waskow of World Resources International said the summit “should pay attention to the severe climate impacts we are already seeing.”

“We cannot ignore an entire continent with more than a billion people living here that is having the greatest impact,” Waskow said. “It is clear that Africa is in very serious danger.”

Leaders will come “to share the progress they have made at home and to accelerate action,” Purvis said. In this case, he said, Biden has a lot to share, as the first major climate-related legislation was passed with $375 billion in spending.

While it’s impressive that so many leaders are attending the summit, “my expectations for ambitious climate targets over the next two days are very low,” said NewClimate Institute scientist Niklas Hohne. says. He said it was due to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused energy and food crises and deprived the country of its response to climate change.