For the first time since 1995, when the U.N. started holding its annual climate summits, the United States brought something big to the talks that began Sunday: a series of new laws that could take a big whack at its greenhouse gas emissions. But even that — and the steps taken by other nations — falls short of what is required to prevent catastrophic climate change in the coming years and decades.
“We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Monday at the summit’s opening ceremonies. “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”
An October U.N. report showed the planet under current climate policies will warm 2.8 degrees Celsius by 2100, a scenario climate scientists say would usher in mass desertification, millions of climate refugees, melting ice caps and mass die-offs of plant and animal species.
