Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Climate change taking a back seat – at a climate change meeting.
Climate takes a back seat to other problems at U.N. meet
BY ZAHRA HIRJI Sep 22, 2022
Between floods that ravaged Pakistan and droughts that parched Europe and China, and innumerable heat waves, the global impact of climate change has become tangible lately. Yet climate hasn’t been at the top of the agenda at the United Nations General Assembly taking place this week in New York City.
World leaders have largely focused their remarks on Russia’s war in Ukraine and soaring energy prices, among other issues. U.S. President Joe Biden began his speech on Wednesday with a harsh condemnation of the Russian invasion before briefly touching on climate change. He touted his administration’s new climate law as a “global game changer,” then he moved on.
But not to the U.N. climate roundtable hosted on Wednesday afternoon by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, as an informal precursor to November’s COP27 climate talks. At least one other G7 leader, French President Emmanuel Macron, also didn’t attend the climate event.
The climate roundtable happened behind closed doors, and afterward Guterres emerged to make a brief public statement in which he described the goal of holding warming temperatures to 1.5 C as “failing fast.” He blamed world leaders for being out of step with the global public on climate. “We have all seen the appalling images from Pakistan, and this is just at 1.2 degrees of global warming and we are heading for over 3 degrees,” he warned. “I told the assembled leaders that we need direction, their leadership now.”
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President Macron didn’t bother to attend, and we’re not sure who else didn’t bother to show up. Even President Biden sent mixed signals about attending. Bloomberg reported Biden wasn’t planing to show, but Biden apparently changed his mind, showed up and delivered a speech.
With a washed out buildup like this, I’m really looking forward to reporting on the COP27 meeting.