Climate change, uncertainty & security May 2023-

UN Climatehttps://www.dianaswednesday.com/wp-admin/edit.php Change Conference COP28
United Arab Emirates 30 Nov-12 Dec, 2023
Anthropocene Working Group

As the World Burns – Climate Change’s Dangerous Next Phase
By Michael Oppenheimer
(Foreign Affairs November/December 2020) Many observers assess the threat of climate change in terms of the frequency or severity of extreme events. They have viewed each crisis—be it a Texas hurricane or a California wildfire—as distinct from others. But consider how people feel on the fourth day of a heat wave as opposed to the first. Their resilience begins to drain away. Viewing weather events as independent occurrences is like trying to understand a movie by looking at a series of brief clips; they are important plot points, but not the whole story. In fact, viewing climate change as the accumulation of individual events underestimates the threat, because such events do not take place in a vacuum. As recent research shows, features of the climate interact with one another—interactions that exacerbate the impact on people and ecosystems.
Two interactions are particularly worrisome. First, as extreme events become more intense and more frequent, they will increasingly occur close together in time and location, worsening the overall impact. … The second type of interaction is longer term. It happens when one of the earth’s mechanisms for regulating the climate—systems involving air, the ocean, land, or ice—runs amok, setting off a chain reaction involving other such mechanisms. (October 13, 2020)

Humanity has a ‘brief and rapidly closing window’ to avoid a hotter, deadly future, U.N. climate report says
Latest IPCC report details escalating toll — but top scientists say the world still can choose a less catastrophic path
Unchecked greenhouse gas emissions will raise sea levels several feet, swallowing small island nations and overwhelming even the world’s wealthiest coastal regions. Drought, heat, hunger and disaster may force millions of people from their homes. Coral reefs could vanish, along with a growing number of animal species. Disease-carrying insects would proliferate. Deaths — from malnutrition, extreme heat, pollution — will surge.
These are some of the grim projections detailed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body dedicated to providing policymakers with regular assessments of the warming world. (28 Feb. 2022)

13 September
Earth is outside its ‘safe operating space for humanity’ on most key measurements, study says
(AP) Earth is exceeding its “safe operating space for humanity” in six of nine key measurements of its health, and two of the remaining three are headed in the wrong direction, a new study said.
Earth’s climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nutrient pollution and “novel” chemicals (human-made compounds like microplastics and nuclear waste) are all out of whack, a group of international scientists said in Wednesday’s journal Science Advances. Only the acidity of the oceans, the health of the air and the ozone layer are within the boundaries considered safe, and both ocean and air pollution are heading in the wrong direction, the study said.
“We are in very bad shape,” said study co-author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “We show in this analysis that the planet is losing resilience and the patient is sick.”
Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries
(Science Advances) This planetary boundaries framework update finds that six of the nine boundaries are transgressed, suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity. Ocean acidification is close to being breached, while aerosol loading regionally exceeds the boundary. Stratospheric ozone levels have slightly recovered. The transgression level has increased for all boundaries earlier identified as overstepped. As primary production drives Earth system biosphere functions, human appropriation of net primary production is proposed as a control variable for functional biosphere integrity. This boundary is also transgressed. Earth system modeling of different levels of the transgression of the climate and land system change boundaries illustrates that these anthropogenic impacts on Earth system must be considered in a systemic context.

8 September
Experts Warn of ‘Denialism Comeback’ Ahead of November’s Global Climate Talks
Even amid a disaster-filled summer marked by record heat, climate misinformation continues to spread online at alarming rates. Some experts fear it could slow progress at COP28.
(Inside Climate News) A “heat wave scam” is what one social media user called the record-high temperatures reported by European scientists late last month. In a separate post, another account referred to new policies aimed at reducing the carbon emissions of buildings as “climate communism.” As of Friday, the two social media posts have been viewed at least 2 million times—more eyeballs than some of the biggest primetime cable news shows will average in a week.
The internet is awash with misinformation about the climate crisis, even as its effects on the planet couldn’t be more clear. The summer of 2023 is officially the hottest on record, the World Meteorological Organization reported this week. That historic heat has fueled deadly extreme weather across large swaths of the world and pushed global sea temperatures to record highs, disrupting ocean ecosystems and putting countless marine species at risk.
In fact, more than 3.8 billion people—or nearly half the world’s population—experienced extreme heat between June and August that was made more likely because of human-caused climate change, according to a new analysis by Climate Central. This week alone, Britain recorded its hottest day of the year so far and several regions in the United States are once again under heat advisories, as yet another series of brutal heat waves test struggling power grids, damage critical water systems and raise the cost of doing business in industries like farming.
Yet despite those impacts playing out in real time, conspiracy theories and misleading claims about climate change continue to spread online at alarming rates, muddying public debate and exacerbating political divides at a time when scientists say some of the worst consequences of global warming can still be avoided if societies can just find a way to cooperate. Recent reports show climate misinformation has become a growing issue not just in Western countries like the U.S. or Britain, but also in Latin America and China.
“Denialism is making a real comeback, but in a way that is framed for the current conspiratorial universe,” said Jennie King, head of climate research and policy at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a watchdog group focused on combating disinformation and human rights abuses, in an interview last month with Carbon Brief. “So, rather than ‘don’t trust the science,’ it is much more ‘don’t trust the scientists.’”
Some surveys in recent years suggest that public trust in scientists, experts and government officials are falling to historic lows. A Pew survey from last year found just 29 percent of U.S. adults said they have a great deal of confidence that scientists will act in the public’s best interests. Two other Pew surveys, conducted this spring and summer, found that nearly a third of Americans don’t believe humans are causing climate change at all, with 26 percent saying natural patterns in the environment are mostly to blame and another 14 percent saying they don’t believe there’s even evidence the Earth is warming.

6 September
49 million people in the U.S. may be exposed to dangerous heat today
Extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather hazard, and the risk of longer and more frequent heat waves is only expected to increase as climate change worsens.
The Post is tracking the potential for dangerous heat using the heat index, which accounts for the combined impact of temperature and humidity — the higher the humidity, the more difficult it is for the body to cool itself off through sweating.

5 September
Billions pledged for green energy as Africa climate talks enter second day
The three-day Nairobi summit, which began on Monday, is meant to define a shared vision for green development in Africa.
The United Arab Emirates has pledged $4.5bn in clean energy investments in Africa at a landmark climate summit aimed at showcasing the continent’s potential as a green powerhouse.
Kenyan President William Ruto has sought to use the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi to shift the narrative on the continent, presenting the clean energy transition as a unique opportunity for Africa – if it can attract the financing to realise its potential.
Sultan al-Jaber, who heads the UAE’s national oil company ADNOC and government-owned renewable energy company Masdar, said the investment would “jumpstart a pipeline of bankable clean energy projects in this very important continent”.
Al-Jaber, who is also president of the COP28 climate summit, said a consortium including Masdar would help develop 15 gigawatts of clean power by 2030.

18 August
Maui Wildfires Show That ‘Risk Is Ubiquitous Now’
A wildfire resilience expert talks about what communities everywhere can do to prepare for disasters, even in places some may not expect them to occur.

Wealthy oil nation lays groundwork for ‘eye-popping’ climate fund: The United Arab Emirates is considering creating a multibillion-dollar fund to spur clean energy investments across the world that it plans to unveil at this year’s U.N. climate talks in Dubai, according to people familiar with the plan.
The fund could amount to tens of billions of dollars, with a sizable slice of the money coming from the UAE’s sovereign wealth reserves, according to seven people with knowledge of the discussions. A G-7 government official said envoys from the oil-rich Mideast nation had privately mentioned the idea of a fund of at least $25 billion.
Creation of the fund would be one of the largest ever state-sponsored financial efforts to help countries fight climate change. And it comes as the UAE and Sultan al-Jaber, the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. who is leading the climate talks, have drawn criticism from environmental advocates and some U.S. and European lawmakers for hosting the international gathering despite being one of the world’s largest contributors of greenhouse gases.
The summit, known as COP28, starts on Nov. 30.
The fund would help fill a financial chasm to shift nations’ energy economies off fossil fuels, with the aim of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. Experts have said the effort will require trillions of dollars in spending to avoid catastrophic, irreversible effects of climate change.
… The oil-rich UAE is under pressure to use its wealth to help prepare the world’s poorest countries to adapt to climate change that has been primarily caused by rich, developed economies. U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry has openly pushed for the Gulf nation to join the list of countries that are climate donors.

Climate adaptation finance in Africa
Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, Jamal Saghir
(Brookings) Climate change continues to cause devastation in Africa. The impacts of climate change in Africa are being further exacerbated by the impact of global shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, food and energy crisis, and the ongoing war in Ukraine. The financing needs to help Africa enhance its resilience and be better prepared for a rapidly changing climate are enormous.
A recent analysis by the Climate Policy Initiative and the Global Center for Adaptation shows that an annual average of $29.5 billion in climate finance was committed to Africa in the years 2019 and 2020. Further analysis of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) also indicates that the adaptation finance needs for the continent over the period 2020-30 are close to $580 billion. Unless adaptation finance increases substantially in Africa, a gap of $453 billion will accumulate over this decade.

26 July
British professor elected to lead UN climate panel in key decade
British professor Jim Skea was elected to lead the UN’s climate expert panel Wednesday, taking the helm of the organization charged with distilling the best science to inform global policy in a critical decade for humans and the planet.
Skea, a Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College London who co-chaired the report on curbing planet-heating emissions in the latest round of assessments, was elected chair at a meeting of the 195-nation organization in Nairobi.
“Climate change is an existential threat to our planet,” he told delegates.
With impacts already sweeping the planet—from devastating floods to blistering heatwaves—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plays a key role in the growing scientific knowledge on climate change.

11-12 July

Earth may be starting a new geological chapter. What is the Anthropocene?
(WaPo) A lake in Canada serves as the best proof that humans have caused lasting and significant environmental changes to the planet since the mid-20th century — so much so that a group of scientists says a new formal chapter, called the Anthropocene, should be added to the planet’s official history.
The body of water, Crawford Lake, has layered sediments that record more than a thousand years of environmental history, including proof of humanity’s adverse impacts on the planet since the mid-20th century…. Many of the changes “will persist for millennia or longer, and are altering the trajectory of the Earth,” according to the Anthropocene Working Group.
Crawford Lake shows humans started a new chapter in geologic time, scientists say
(WaPo) A humble lake in a Canadian suburb may soon become the symbolic starting point for a radical new chapter in Earth’s official history: the Anthropocene, or the age of humans.
Canada’s Crawford Lake could mark the beginning of the Anthropocene
The proposed geologic epoch denotes when humans began profoundly changing the planet
(Science News) Scientists are one step closer to defining a new chapter in geology, one in which humans have become the dominant driver of Earth’s climate and environment.
Out of 12 locations around the world, Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada, has been selected as the site that would mark the official beginning of the Anthropocene, a proposed geologic epoch starting in the 1950s, researchers announced at a July 11 news conference during the Max Planck Society Conference for a Sustainable Anthropocene in Berlin.
Scientists say new epoch marked by human impact — the Anthropocene — began in 1950s
(NPR) From climate change to species loss and pollution, humans have etched their impact on the Earth with such strength and permanence since the middle of the 20th century that a special team of scientists says a new geologic epoch began then.
Called the Anthropocene — and derived from the Greek terms for “human” and “new” — this epoch started sometime between 1950 and 1954, according to the scientists. While there is evidence worldwide that captures the impact of burning fossil fuels, detonating nuclear weapons and dumping fertilizers and plastics on land and in waterways, the scientists are proposing a small but deep lake outside of Toronto, Canada — Crawford Lake — to place a historic marker.
Canada’s Crawford Lake chosen as ‘golden spike’ to mark proposed new epoch
Sediments from Ontario’s Crawford Lake picked as ‘golden spike’ showing global human impact on Earth
(CBC) Scientists have picked the bottom of Crawford Lake in Ontario as the “golden spike” to mark the start of a new proposed geological epoch — the Anthropocene. The announcement was made at a media conference in Berlin Tuesday by a group of scientists called the Anthropocene Working Group — more on them later.
Here’s why the lake was chosen and what evidence it provides that humans have made such big changes to the Earth that we may be in a new geologic time period.

13 July
‘Things Don’t Always Change in a Nice, Gradual Way’
Climate change feels more real now than ever.
By Jacob Stern
(The Atlantic) It’s getting hard to keep track of all the overlapping climate disasters. In Phoenix, Arizona, the temperature has broken 110 degrees for nearly two weeks running. The waters off the Florida coast are approaching hot-tub hot, and before long, marine heat waves may cover half the world’s oceans. Up north, Canada’s worst wildfire season on record burns on and continues to suffocate American cities with sporadic smoke, which may not clear for good until October. In the Northeast, floods have put towns underwater, erased entire roadways, and left train tracks eerily suspended 100 feet in the air. Also, the sea ice in Antarctica—which should be expanding rapidly right now, because, remember, it’s winter down there—may be losing mass.
In one sense, this pile-up of crises is exactly what climate scientists expected. Global temperatures are rising at pretty much the anticipated rate, Simon Lee, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University, told me, and natural disasters are corollaries to that fact. There will be some year-to-year variation in what happens—and this one may clock in with slightly worse conditions, overall, than trend lines would predict. But the fact is, climate change is implicated at least to some extent in all of these disasters.

23 June
Rich nations pledge to unlock hundreds of billions of dollars for climate fight
Rich nations close in on $100 bln climate finance pledge
(Reuters) The leaders, gathered at a summit in Paris to thrash out funding for the climate transition and post-COVID debt burdens of poor countries, said their plans would secure billions of dollars of matching investment from the private sector.
An overdue pledge of $100 billion in climate finance for developing nations was also now in sight, they said.
The announcements mark a scaling up of action from the development banks in the fight against climate change and set a direction for further change ahead of their annual meetings later in the year.
However, some climate activists were critical of the results.
“While the roadmap from the Paris Summit acknowledges the urgency for substantial financial resources to bolster climate action, it leans too heavily on private investments and ascribes an outsized role to multilateral development banks,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International.
Many of the topics discussed in Paris took up suggestions from a group of developing countries, led by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, dubbed the ‘Bridgetown Initiative’.
(Explainer: What is the ‘Bridgetown Initiative’ asking for at Paris financial summit?)

22 June
Climate impact of shipping under growing scrutiny ahead of key meeting
Court has been told states are legally responsible for tackling sector’s emissions as IMO talks loom
Governments are under growing pressure to tackle the huge climate impact of the shipping industry, before a key International Maritime Organization (IMO) meeting in the summer.
With talks about regulating the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions coming up, the world maritime court has been told that states are legally responsible for tackling the climate impact of shipping.
The international tribunal for the law of the sea has been asked by a group of island nations to give its opinion on the climate crisis and marine responsibilities.

21 June
‘A green transition that leaves no one behind’: world leaders release open letter
(The Guardian) We, leaders of diverse economies from every corner of the world, are united in our determination to forge a new global consensus. We will use the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact on June 22-23 as a decisive political moment to recover development gains lost in recent years and to accelerate progress towards the SDGs, including just transitions.

16 June
Air and sea surface temperatures hit new records
(WMO) Global-mean surface air temperatures for the first days of June 2023 were the highest – by a considerable margin – for the time of year in the data record of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) operated by ECMWF. This is after one of the warmest Mays on record.
Global sea surface temperatures hit a new high in May for the second consecutive month and in June are tracking at unprecedented levels for this time of year, in particular in the North Atlantic. Antarctic sea ice extent reached a record low monthly value in May, the third time in 2023 that the monthly value has reached a record low.
The extraordinary sea surface temperatures are ringing alarm bells, according to Dr Anthony Rea, Director of Infrastructure at the World Meteorological Organization and head of the Global Climate Observing System.
“Globally, sea surface temperatures are on average 0.2 degrees warmer than at the same time last year. This may not sound like much but considering the total surface of the global oceans and their calorific capacity, it represents in fact an enormous amount of heat energy absorbed by the ocean. This comes with a cost, including likely impacts on weather patterns, cyclone intensification and loss of biodiversity, such as coral reef bleaching, “ said Dr Rea.

9 June
Climate Action Network Position on Debt Swaps
(Relief Web) Debt-for-climate/nature swaps are not an adequate solution to the debt and climate crises. Furthermore, their implementation can pose significant risks and challenges, causing harm to Global South governments and citizens. Instead, our attention must remain focused on the solutions that will adequately address both crises – large-scale debt cancellation for all countries that need it across all creditors, a renewed consensus on responsible lending and borrowing, and significantly scaled-up new, additional and grant-based climate finance.

Your Guide to Understanding the East Coast Smokepocalypse
The Canadian wildfire smoke that made New York City look like Mars this week has moved on. Here’s a look at where it’s going, how to protect yourself and climate change’s potential role.
Millions of East Coasters awoke to clearer skies today after ash-laden smoke from raging Canadian wildfires turned much of the Northeast this week into a toxic, crimson hellscape.
The smoke, which began to billow into the U.S. from Quebec on Tuesday, engulfed entire skylines in a thick haze of soot, aggravating asthma attacks and prompting officials to declare air quality alerts from Pittsburgh to Baltimore to Provincetown, Massachusetts. By Wednesday afternoon, the haze had swallowed all of New York City, blotting out the sun and tinting the sky an ominous dark orange—like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie.
It was some of the worst air pollution the region had experienced on record, causing major disruptions as schools and restaurants opted to close, professional sports leagues delayed their games and federal officials curbed air travel due to poor visibility.

7-9 June
After oil exec named COP28 president, fake accounts rally to his defence
Disinformation expert says network of bots supporting UAE oil exec heading up UN climate conference
(CBC As It Happens) A disinformation expert says a network of fake accounts are defending the United Nations’ decision to host this year’s COP28 climate talks in the oil-rich country, and to appoint UAE oil company CEO Sultan al-Jaber as the conference’s president.
Marc Owen Jones — a professor of Middle East studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar who researches disinformation and digital media — says he first noticed the deception campaign after the controversial news of Jaber’s appointment made headlines.
“Suddenly, all these accounts appeared and started tweeting in defence of him,” Jones, author of Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East, told As It Happens guest host Helen Mann. “I thought that was quite suspicious.”
Jones says he has identified a network of about 100 fake accounts and 30,000 tweets, all posting similar messages in defence of the UAE, Jaber and COP28.
Army of fake social media accounts defend UAE presidency of climate summit
Sultan Al Jaber – Cop28 president and CEO of state oil firm – is ‘ally the climate movement needs’, posts say
‘Absolute scandal’: UAE state oil firm able to read Cop28 climate summit emails
Exclusive: UN conference president Sultan Al Jaber is also head of oil firm, which was consulted on how to respond to a media inquiry
(The Guardian) The UAE is hosting the UN climate summit in November and the president of Cop28 is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc). The revelations have been called “explosive” and a “scandal” by lawmakers.
The Cop28 office had claimed its email system was “standalone” and “separate” from that of Adnoc. But expert technical analysis showed the office shared email servers with Adnoc. After the Guardian’s inquiries, the Cop28 office switched to a different server on Monday.

1 June
Celeste Saulo of Argentina appointed first female Secretary-General of WMO
(WMO) – Prof. Celeste Saulo of Argentina has been appointed as the first female Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), taking the helm of an organization at the fore of international efforts to monitor and tackle climate change and increasingly extreme weather.
Prof. Saulo, has been Director of the National Meteorological Service of Argentina since 2014 and is currently the First Vice-President of WMO. She will take office on 1 January 2024 and succeeds Prof Petteri Taalas, who has completed his two-term mandate.
Prof. Saulo was appointed after receiving the requisite two thirds majority of votes from delegates at the quadrennial World Meteorological Congress, the top decision-making body of the 193-Member WMO.

UN Climate Change News, 1 June 2023 – This year’s Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB58) launches next Monday, 5 June, designed to prepare decisions for adoption at COP28 in the United Arab Emirates in December.
Building on the many mandates that emerged from COP27 in Egypt last year, the conference will convene the 58th session of the UNFCCC subsidiary bodies, including a large number of events, and continue discussions on issues of critical importance.

31 May
Earth is ‘really quite sick now’ and in danger zone in nearly all ecological ways, study says
By Seth Borenstein
(AP) Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established safety limits and into “the danger zone,” not just for an overheating planet that’s losing its natural areas, but for the well-being of people living on it, according to a new study.
The study looks not just at guardrails for the planetary ecosystem but for the first time it includes measures of “justice,” which is mostly about preventing harm for countries, ethnicities and genders.
The study by the international scientist group Earth Commission published in Wednesday’s journal Nature looks at climate, air pollution, phosphorus and nitrogen contamination of water from fertilizer overuse, groundwater supplies, fresh surface water, the unbuilt natural environment and the overall natural and human-built environment. Only air pollution wasn’t quite at the danger point globally.

23 May
Quantifying the human cost of global warming
(Nature sustainability) The costs of climate change are often estimated in monetary terms, but this raises ethical issues. …
Calls for climate justice highlight the vital need to address the social injustices driven by climate change6. But what is the human cost of climate change and who bears it? Existing estimates tend to be expressed in monetary terms7, tend to recognize impacts on the rich more than those on the poor (because the rich have more money to lose) and tend to value those living now over those living in the future (because future damages are subject to economic discounting). From an equity standpoint, this is unethical8—when life or health are at stake, all people should be considered equal, whether rich or poor, alive or yet to be born.
A Fifth of the World Could Live With Dangerous Heat by 2100, New Study Warns
Most people live in a place with a mean annual temperature of 55 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. But billions of people could see that figure jump to 84 degrees or higher, research say
(Inside Climate News) One in five people could live in dangerously hot conditions by the end of the century if global warming continues at its current pace, even if nations uphold their pledges under the Paris Agreement, scientists warned in a new peer-reviewed study. It’s the latest research published in recent days that points to the stark human and societal costs of the accelerating climate crisis as global carbon emissions continue to rise to unprecedented levels.
Quantifying the human cost of global warming estimates that some 2 billion people would see a mean annual temperature of 84 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, starting in as early as 2070, when Earth’s population is expected to reach at least 9.5 billion. Most people live in a “human climate niche” that ranges between a mean annual temperature of 55 degrees and 80 degrees, the researchers said, so that many people experiencing a major uptick in regional heat would be unprecedented
Middle East countries face extreme heat risk, study finds
New research suggests several regional countries may have entire populations exposed to extreme temperatures due to climate change.
(Al Jazeera) Countries across the Gulf region and the wider Middle East are highly vulnerable to extreme heat borne out of climate change, with poorer populations being particularly at risk in the decades ahead, a new study has warned.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE may be facing a dire situation in either temperature rise scenario as a majority of their populations are also projected to be exposed to extreme heat even if global temperatures rise by 1.5C (2.7F)
Last week, the World Meteorological Organization said the next five years will be the warmest period ever recorded as for the first time, global temperatures were now more likely than not to exceed 1.5C (2.7F) of warming until 2027.
These countries will be dangerously hot within the next century
(WaPo) India, Nigeria and Indonesia were the countries with the largest populations at risk if temperatures rise 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit.

US, European lawmakers call for head of UN climate talks to be removed over fossil fuel links
(AP) — Scores of members of Congress and the European Parliament called Tuesday for the designated chair of the next United Nations climate summit to be replaced over his ties to the fossil fuel sector and for the industry’s influence at the upcoming talks to be sharply limited.
The United Arab Emirates has been strongly criticized by environmental advocates for nominating Sultan al-Jaber, the head of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, to preside over the Nov. 30 – Dec. 12 meeting in Dubai known as COP28.
In an open letter, the lawmakers urged U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, U.S. President Joe Biden, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell to “engage in diplomatic efforts to secure the withdrawal of the president-designate of COP28.”
Citing the presence of hundreds of oil and gas industry lobbyists at last year’s climate talks in Egypt, the lawmakers also called on leaders to “take immediate steps to limit the influence of polluting industries, particularly major fossil fuel industry players whose business strategies lie at clear odds with the central goals” of the 2015 Paris climate accord.