https://www.theguardian.

com/world/2023/sep/20/antonio-guterres-un-climate-summit-gates-hell

Humanity has ‘opened gates to hell’ by

letting climate crisis worsen, UN secretary
warns
António Guterres opened United Nations climate ambition summit
with attack on wealthy countries and the fossil fuel industry
Humanity has “opened the gates to hell” by allowing the climate crisis to worsen, the
secretary general of the United Nations has warned at a climate summit of leaders that
saw angry denunciations of the fossil fuel industry but was undercut by the absence of
many of the biggest carbon-emitting countries.
António Guterres opened the UN climate ambition summit, held in New York on
Wednesday, with a lacerating attack on wealthy countries and the fossil fuel industry for
their ponderous response to the climate crisis.

The UN secretary general said the world is “decades behind” in the transition to clean
energy. “We must make up time lost to foot-dragging, arm-twisting and the naked greed
of entrenched interests raking in billions from fossil fuels,” Guterres said, adding that
some fossil fuel companies had embarked upon a “shameful” attempt to stymie the
transition.

Wealthy countries need to get their planet-heating emissions to net zero as close as
possible to 2040, Guterres said, a task that a recent UN analysis found is well off track,
as well as deliver promised climate funding to poorer, vulnerable nations that has so far
been lacking.

“Many of the poorest nations have every right to be angry, angry that they are suffering
most from a climate crisis they did nothing to create, angry that promised finance hasn’t
materialized and angry that their borrowing costs are sky high,” he said.

Guterres said that “humanity has opened the gates of hell” by unleashing worsening
heatwaves, floods and wildfires seen around the world and that a “dangerous and
unstable” future of 2.8C global heating, compared with the pre-industrial era, was
awaiting without radical action. “The future of humanity is in our hands,” he said. “We
must turn up the tempo, turn plans into action and turn the tide.”

Leaders from more than 100 countries were asked to take part in the climate ambition
summit, with invites extended to those the UN deemed “to have new, improved
ambition on climate”. In a sobering indication of the shortfall in the required effort to
avoid disastrous climate change, most of the world’s biggest carbon emitters were
absent, including Joe Biden, president of the US, and Xi Jinping, president of China –
leaders of the two largest polluters.

Also absent was France’s Emmanuel Macron, India’s Narendra Modi and Britain’s Rishi
Sunak, who has been the focus of intense criticism after he announced a watering down
of the UK’s policies to reach net zero emissions. “Their absence is illustrative of the
point we aren’t taking seriously the magnitude of the task right now,” said Kelly Sims
Gallagher, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a former White House
adviser. “If we were serious, all of them would be at the table today. It’s concerning.”
The summit itself contained some fiery denunciations of the fossil fuel industry, a stark
contrast to previous diplomatic niceties that muted such criticism in previous UN
forums. There was applause in the room when Gavin Newsom, the governor of
California, said that “this climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis”.

“It’s not complicated. It’s the burning of oil. It’s the burning of gas. It’s the burning of
coal. And we need to call that out,” Newsom said. “For decades and decades, the oil
industry has been playing each and every one of us in this room for fools. They have
been buying off politicians. Their deceit and denial going back decades, have created the
conditions that persist here today.”

Gabriel Boric, the president of Chile said that “we need to leave fossil fuels behind” and
criticized “greenwashing” by large businesses, while Kausea Natano, prime minister of
Tuvalu, a Pacific island nation at acute risk from sea level rise, called for a fossil fuel
non-proliferation treaty. “The longer we remain addicted to fossil fuels, the longer we
commit ourselves to mutual decline,” he said.
Some other developing and small island state leaders also lamented the lack of progress
by wealthy nations to deliver $100bn in promised climate aid and the difficulties in
securing financing at reasonable rates in order to build out the infrastructure needed to
adapt to a world with fiercer storms, heatwaves and floods.

“We are in the final stages of the actions needed to preserve this planet and regrettably I
don’t think everyone is getting it,” said Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados.

“It’s painful to continue to see that you are asking us to increase borrowing to build
resilient infrastructure for something we didn’t do, and at the same time you want to
also ensure you have a loss and damage fund that doesn’t have the adequate means for
grant funding to help countries rebuild. It’s unconscionable and almost a crime against
humanity.”

Guterres admitted that the summit alone was not likely to significantly alter the
trajectory of the climate crisis but some measures were announced in New York, such as
the US being one of a host of countries to sign a treaty to protect the world’s oceans.
Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York, meanwhile pledged
another $500m to an effort to shut down coal and gas plants in the US.

But there remains a yawning gap in terms of what is needed to avert disastrous climate
change, with little optimism the upcoming Cop28 climate summit in Dubai in November
will remedy this.

“The small steps countries offered are welcome, but they’re like trying to put out an
inferno with a leaking hose,” said David Waskow, director of the International Climate
Initiative at the World Resources Institute. “There is simply a huge mismatch between
the depth of actions governments and businesses are taking and the transformative
shifts that are needed to address the climate crisis.”