Climate change leaves us at ‘gates of hell,’ says U.N.’s Guterres at event that pushes aside mega-polluters U.S., China

Missing from the list of 34 speakers representing countries at Guterres’ Climate Ambition Summit were the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters China, the U.S., India and the United Arab Emirates, the last of which is the host of the U.N.’s climate-specific annual meeting, known as COP28, later this year.

They weren’t allowed to speak because, organizers said, they had no new actions to announce.

The summit did feature speeches from leaders who Guterres says are responding to his call to “accelerate” global climate action, including Brazil, Canada, the European Union and Pakistan.

Guterres convened the summit, which features within the U.N.’s regular meetings, by giving only world leaders who came with new concrete actions the opportunity to address their peers on the issue. Many of countries who did address the U.N. are responsible for roughly 10% combined of the world’s annual carbon pollution.

Heads of state from China, the U.S., India, Russia, the U.K. and France all skipped the summit. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry was in attendance though not given a speaking role, even though President Joe Biden was also in New York.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who presides over the world’s fifth largest economy, was given a slot to speak at the U.N. and tout his state’s efforts. In the recent days and weeks alone, California has advanced state legislation demanding tougher emissions reporting from big companies operating in the state, has sued oil concerns for misleading the public on climate change and has passed a state law promoting more offshore wind-power efforts.

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Non-member states and international financial institutions that will get speaking slots include private-sector insurance and financial concern Allianz, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the city of London.

Earlier this week, in a related development, leaders of both the World Health Organization and the upcoming COP28 climate negotiations said they will devote a day during the December climate talks to public health issues for the first time. By concentrating on how climate change is causing death and disease, they hope, nations may act more on the root cause: carbon pollution.

“Climate change is killing us, and climate change is a health crisis,” said Vanessa Kerry, the WHO’s special envoy for health and climate change, CEO of Seed Global Health and the daughter of John Kerry. “We shouldn’t be measuring our failures in degrees Celsius but in lives lost.”

A U.N. report earlier this month showed the world remains behind in its efforts to fulfill the 2015 Paris agreement and limit future warming, said Adnan Amin, the CEO of the upcoming COP28 climate talks.

The Dubai talks are “one of the last chances you get to course-correct,” he said. And a day devoted to public health “is where you can actually get traction for change.”

For businesses, cities and financial institutions, the U.N. requires transition plans aligned with U.N. integrity recommendations, emission reduction targets for 2025 that include indirect emissions, as well as plans to phase out fossil fuels
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Guterres has been blunt in his assessment of countries’ climate actions and whether they will deliver on the Paris agreement goal to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5°C.

In July, he said it is an era of “global boiling” beyond global warming.

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“I’m not sure all leaders are feeling the heat. Actions are falling abysmally short,” he said in his opening remarks this week of the U.N. General Assembly.

The Associated Press contributed.