Closing summary
It’s 4pm Eastern time. Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
Humanity has “opened the gates to hell” by allowing the climate crisis to worsen, the secretary general of the United Nations António Guterres warned at the UN climate ambition summit. Guterres made a lacerating attack on wealthy countries and the fossil fuel industry for their ponderous response to the climate crisis.
The UN chief’s speech was undercut by the absence of many of the biggest carbon-emitting countries. The summit failed to attract the leaders of the two biggest carbon emitters, with neither Joe Biden, the US president, nor Xi Jinping, president of China, attending. Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, were also missing the gathering.
In the UK, Rishi Sunak announced a major U-turn on the government’s climate commitments. In one of his biggest policy changes since taking office, Sunak confirmed the UK would push back the deadline for selling new petrol and diesel cars and the phasing out of gas boilers, a move met with despair by climate scientists and environmental experts.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the UN security council that the way to bring peace in Ukraine and to prevent further wars of aggression is through fundamental UN reform. The Ukrainian president argued that the war had demonstrated the need to limit veto power, give the UN general assembly the power to override vetoes, and expand the council’s permanent members beyond the current five powers.
China’s vice foreign minister, Ma Zhaoxu, said Beijing believes that the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected”. China has facilitated talks for peace “in its own way” and that Beijing has played a “positive and constructive role” in resolving the conflict in Ukraine, he told the security council.
Even the diplomats aren’t sugar-coating their ire. Former UN climate envoy Rachel Kyte, the dean emerita at Tufts University’s Fletcher school of law and diplomacy in Massachusetts, said:
Making net zero a scapegoat for years of the government mismanaging the economy and energy policy is a dangerous stunt … Incompetence – not net zero – has brought us to this point.
Meanwhile the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who’s been in New York this week, described Sunak’s U-turn as “utter chaos”.
Utter chaos, confusion and uncertainty from the Govt.
— Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) September 20, 2023
We’re in a climate emergency. Now is not the time to water down vital net zero measures.
The Govt are undermining business confidence and passing up a huge opportunity to reduce bills, create jobs & increase our prosperity.
Earlier this week Khan told the Guardian about the climate threats looming over the best city in the world (I’m a Londoner, but it’s true).
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