Comment on UN Climate Action Summit

Commenting on the Climate Action Summit hosted by UN Secretary-General António Guterres at UNHQ in New York this week, Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said:

“Events at the summit have laid out the fault lines on climate change more starkly than ever.

“On the one hand, four million people marching around the world demanding action, a host of businesses and financial institutions committing to ‘green’ their business models, and the world’s poorest 47 nations committing to net zero emissions.

“On the other, virtually nothing new from Germany, France and other self-professed ‘climate leaders’, and repetition by the US and Australia of the ‘Oh, but look at China’ line from a decade ago.

“This, then, is the fracture that the UK Government needs to start bridging as it prepares to host the vitally important UN climate convention summit at the end of 2020. The one-day event here has set the challenge – and climate-vulnerable Commonwealth nations and the increasingly concerned British public will be looking to the Government to deliver solutions next year.”