BY AFP

That The climate crisis caused by human activities has opened the “gates of hell”The UN Secretary General warned this Wednesday at the opening of the Climate Ambition Summit, which was not attended by the United States and China, the two most polluting countries.

Droughts, floods, scorching temperatures, historic fires“humanity has opened the gates of hell”, as shown by the “terrifying impact of the terrible heat”, said Antonio Guterres, at this meeting whose participants were the best students in the fight against climate change.

Despite multiple and intense extreme climate events, warming-causing greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and the fossil energy sector continues to generate record profits.

The future “is undecided, it’s up to leaders like you to write it”said Guterres, who believes that “we can still limit global temperature rise to 1.5ºC and build a world with clean air, green jobs and affordable clean energy for all.

If there is no change, the planet is heading towards a temperature increase of 2.8 ºChe warned.

“We must make up for the time lost due to the inaction, pressure and greed of entrenched interest groups that make billions of dollars from fossil fuels,” Guterres said.

Announced hours before this “common sense” meeting, among the thirty participants was neither the United States, although Joe Biden was in New York, where he spoke the day before at the UN General Assembly, nor China, whose president is one of the most many were absent from the event in New York.

Another notable absence was Britain, whose Prime Minister Rishi Sunak – also not present in New York – on Tuesday suggested it might revisit its goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

On the other hand, the European Union was invited to present its climate policy, as well as Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Spain, Canada or South Africa and many countries on the front line against the impacts of warming, such as Barbados, Samoa or Tuvalu.

The Secretary General also invited other actors such as the Governor of California and the Mayor of London.

“There will be no room for rollbacks, environmental fraud, evasion of responsibility or repackaging of advertising from previous years,” he warned when announcing the meeting in late December.

– “Correct” –

“It may be good news that Biden has no place to speak at the summit,” commented Catherine Abreu, of the NGO Destino Cero, pointing the finger at the United States’ fossil fuel expansion plans.

“This is a correction to the previous summit, where leaders have an opportunity to claim climate leadership on the international stage, while pursuing plans to expand the use of fossil fuels which triggers the climate crisis in the country,” he added.

The summit is the most important climate meeting in the United States since 2019, when Swedish activist Greta Thunberg uttered a “how dare you!”

Anger is growing among climate activists, especially among young people, who last weekend took to the streets of New York again in demonstrations against fossil fuels.

Observers are eagerly awaiting what the leaders of Canada and the European Union in particular will say about their own ambitions and also about their financial commitments to help the most vulnerable countries tackle global warming, for which they are least responsible. .

The failure of rich countries to fulfill their aid promises to developing countries is a sensitive issue in international climate negotiations.

This is a controversy that will surely return to the COP28 agenda in the coming weeks. The good news is that Colombia, which will participate in Wednesday’s summit, and Panama joined an alliance of countries committed to phasing out coal on Tuesday.