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U.N. Chief’s Test: Shaming Without Naming the World’s Climate Delinquents [1]
['Somini Sengupta', 'More About Somini Sengupta']
Date: 2023-09-19
The world’s top diplomat, António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, has lately been unusually blunt in his broadsides against fossil fuel producers. He has accused them of “profiting from destruction.” He has urged governments to stop funding coal and to put the brakes on new oil and gas projects. “History is coming for the planet-wreckers,” he has said.
But who are these “planet wreckers?” He doesn’t name them.
Not China, the world’s coal behemoth. Not Britain or the United States, who both have ambitious climate laws but continue to issue new oil and gas permits. Not the United Arab Emirates, a petrostate where a state-owned oil company executive is hosting the upcoming United Nations climate negotiations — a move that activists have decried as undermining the very legitimacy of the talks.
The contradictions show not only the constraints on Mr. Guterres, a 74-year-old politician from Portugal who has made climate change his centerpiece issue, but also the shortcomings of the diplomatic playbook on a problem as urgent as global warming.
“The rules of multilateral diplomacy and multilateral summitry are not fit for the speedy and effective response that we need,” said Richard Gowan, who decodes the rituals of the United Nations for the International Crisis Group.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/climate/guterres-climate-summit.html
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