UNITED NATIONS -- This is the world we live in: Punishing heat waves, catastrophic floods, huge fires and climate conditions so uncertain that children took to the streets en masse in global protests to demand action.But this is also the world we live in: A pantheon of world leaders who have deep ties
UNITED NATIONS — This is the world we live in: Punishing heat waves, catastrophic floods, huge fires and climate conditions so uncertain that children took to the streets en masse in global protests to demand action.
The problem is, the protesters in the streets and some of the diplomats in the General Assembly hall are living in separate worlds. The latest report by a U.N.-backed scientific panel, meanwhile, projected that if emissions continue to rise at their current pace, by 2040, the world could face inundated coastlines, intensifying droughts and food insecurity. Basically, a catastrophe.
So, Guterres also tempered expectations. He told reporters at a briefing Friday that he did not expect announcements at the summit to yield emissions reductions that would measurably keep temperatures from rising to dangerous levels.
Whether youth protests can goad many world leaders into changing their policies is a big question mark at best, said Michael Gerrard, a law professor at Columbia University. Some of them are closely linked to fossil fuel and extractive industries, he noted. Others have a record of crushing protests. And so the outcry, Gerrard said, may well fall on “intentionally closed ears.”
On Saturday, at the youth summit, Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist whose solo student strike has helped ignite a global youth movement, signaled that pressure would continue.
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