COP 28 Climate Summit Global Warming Talks Begin Amid Deep Tensions

The crucial summit gets down to business a day after scientists said 2023 is set be the hottest year in human history.

World leaders called on Friday for urgent action to slow global warming as the annual United Nations climate summit kicked into gear against a backdrop of two major wars and rising global temperatures.

King Charles III challenged the gathering in Dubai to take “genuine transformational action” to slow the spiral of greenhouse gas emissions, and the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, called for the total phase-out of fossil fuels, on the second day of the meeting, known as COP28.

The war in Gaza hangs over the COP28 climate summit.

Reminders of the war in Gaza punctuated the speeches on Friday at the annual United Nations climate summit on a day when fighting between Israel and Hamas resumed after a weeklong cease-fire. Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, were both scheduled to address the summit, but neither spoke.

Nevertheless, other Middle Eastern heads of state used their time to speak in support of the Palestinians.

Rishi Sunak promises to honor Britain’s climate commitments in a ‘more pragmatic way.’

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain rejected claims on Friday that he had lowered his country’s net-zero ambitions and pledged to meet targets in a more pragmatic way.

At a news conference, Mr. Sunak, who was spending just a few hours at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, committed 1.6 billion pounds, or about $2 billion, for international climate finance projects, including for renewable energy and forests, fulfilling a promise to spend a total of £11.6 billion over five years.

Mr. Sunak said that Britain was “leading by example” but then added swiftly that excessive costs from the transition to net zero should not be borne by ordinary Britons.

“We won’t tackle climate change unless we take people with us,” he said. “Climate politics is close to breaking point.”

“The British people care about the environment,” added Mr. Sunak, who has been trailing in opinion polls ahead of an election that is likely to take place next year. “They know that the costs of inaction are intolerable, but they also know that we have choices about how we act. So, yes, we will meet our targets but we will do it in a more pragmatic way which doesn’t burden working people.”

Mr. Sunak has recently stressed his determination to limit costs to Britons, whose living standards are being squeezed by inflation as their economy stagnates.

That emphasis on Friday from the British prime minister was in striking contrast to the more idealistic tone of King Charles III, a lifelong supporter of environmental causes, who told leaders earlier at the same meeting that “hope of the world” rested on the decisions they took.

Britain has been regarded as one of the global leaders in combating climate change, but this year Mr. Sunak signaled a shift in policy when he said he would delay a ban on the sale of gas and diesel cars by five years, and lower targets for replacing gas boilers.

That followed a surprise victory in July in a parliamentary election in northwestern London, where his Conservative Party campaigned against moves by the city’s Labour mayor to expand an air-quality initiative that raised fees for drivers of older, more polluting vehicles.

On Friday, Mr. Sunak emphasized pragmatism in climate policy even as he insisted that Britain had “done more than others up until now” and would continue to do so.

When asked about the brevity of his visit and why he would spend more time in his plane than on the ground in Dubai, Mr. Sunak responded: “I wouldn’t measure our impact here by hours spent. I would measure it by the actual things we are doing.”

Rich nations are cutting climate aid when developing countries need it most, a U.N. report says.

Wealthy countries have decreased the amount of money they commit to help developing countries cope with the effects of climate change, even as the need for that cash has grown, the United Nations warned in a recent report.

Aid for climate adaptation fell to $21 billion in 2021, the latest year for which comprehensive data is available, a drop of 15 percent from 2020, most likely the result of increased financial pressure on wealthy countries resulting from Covid-19 and other challenges, according to the report, which was published on Nov. 2.

Indigenous delegates say they’re already living with devastating consequences of climate change.

World leaders on Friday, in opening speeches at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, called for action to keep global warming at no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, a target set when the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015. That’s the threshold beyond which, scientists say, humans will have trouble adapting to intensifying wildfires, heat waves, drought and storms.

But on the sidelines of the conference, a group of Indigenous activists from Asia, Africa and South America said their communities were already facing the devastating consequences of climate change.

The main U.S. speaker, Vice President Kamala Harris, was a last-minute addition.

Vice President Kamala Harris will address the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Saturday as a last-minute stand-in for President Biden.

Ms. Harris is expected to highlight the landmark climate law that Mr. Biden signed last year to pump at least $370 billion in spending and tax breaks into clean energy development in the United States. She will also announce initiatives to address rising emissions and help countries build resilience to climate change, her aides said.

For Brazil, ‘the climate emergency is already a reality.’

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, who took office last year pledging to make environmental policy a cornerstone of his administration, called climate change “the greatest challenge that humanity has faced till now.”

But he lamented the fact that, instead of working to address the challenge quickly, the global community was “going to wars that feed divisions and deepen poverty and inequalities.”

Here’s where renewable energy is expanding around the world, and where fossil fuels are on the decline.

Carbon-free electricity has never been more plentiful. Wind and solar power have taken off over the past two decades, faster than experts ever expected. But it hasn’t yet been enough to halt the rise of coal- and gas-burning generation.

That’s because global demand for electricity has grown even faster than clean energy, leaving fossil fuels to fill the gap.

Narendra Modi, India’s leader, rebukes developed countries: ‘A small section of humanity has indiscriminately exploited nature.’

The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, pledged to redouble efforts to shift the world’s most populous country away from fossil fuels and accelerate the development of renewable energy.

“The entire world is watching us,” he said at the United Nations climate conference in Dubai. “Mother Earth is looking toward us to protect her future. We have to succeed.”

Nations have much more work to do to keep global temperatures at relatively safe levels, researchers say.

The world’s nations are taking more defined steps to tackle climate change than ever before, but they are still very far from making the sweeping changes needed to keep global temperatures at relatively safe levels, according to a recent United Nations report.

The annual assessment, issued on Nov. 20 and known as the Emissions Gap Report, tracks the gulf between national ambitions to fight global warming and what scientists say is needed to stave off catastrophe. That gulf has shrunk slightly over the past year but it remains large.