UN chief says world leaders must do more to curtail global warming

As world leaders descend on the United Nations in New York City this week for a mostly in-person summit, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the world is “rapidly running out of time” to combat climate change. 

World leaders have been meeting virtually as they prepare for negotiations scheduled in Glasgow, Scotland, in about six weeks, called the U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP26.

However, Guterres told The Associated Press “there is a high risk of failure” for those negotiations. He cited the “totally dysfunctional” relationship between the United States and China as a potential barrier to progress. 

“I’m not desperate, but I’m tremendously worried,” Guterres said. “We are on the verge of the abyss and we cannot afford a step in the wrong direction.”

Nigel Purvis, a former U.S. State Department climate negotiator and CEO of the private firm Climate Advisers, said concrete actions like China increasing their pledge to cut carbon pollution and the U.S. providing more funding to poor countries gave cause for some optimism. But he shared Guterres’s concerns. 

“The Glasgow meeting is not shaping up to be as well-politically-prepared as the Paris conference was in 2015,” Purvis said to the AP. 

Guterres and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson are hosting a meeting on Monday with about 40 world leaders to discuss demands around increased emissions reduction and more funding for poor countries to use clean energy, in preparation for the Glasgow talks, according to the AP.