Climate Warning from UN

World leaders will assemble in New York for the UN climate action summit. The UN's special envoy for the summit, Luis Alfonso de Alba, said in an interview, “...climate change is running faster than we are, the situation is much more serious than we thought. We need higher political will not only in one country but in a number of them...” Alba recognizes that the public is sometimes skeptical of UN conferences, and he acknowledges that the UN “does not have the means to enforce” the commitments made by governments in the Paris agreement. Instead, he puts his faith, again, in the ability of public pressure to compel governments to do the right thing. “As in many other parts of international law,” he says, “the enforcement rests in the follow-up and the ‘name and shame’ role of civil society – to expose that a country is not complying with what they’ve committed to. The media plays an important role there, and so do activists.” Alba’s own teenage son has given him advice on how to make the case for action: don’t talk so much about the future that youth will inherit but rather about the climate disasters happening now. “He had a point,” says Alba. “This is an emergency we need to deal with today, not tomorrow. Talking about 2030 and 2050 is important because science gives us those dates for achieving certain objectives, but there’s the danger that it tells people that we have time to make these changes. And that is a mistake.”

Sixteen cities will commit to implementing global goals to end poverty, inequality and other challenges by 2030 during the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations. They will sign a voluntary declaration drafted by New York City.

“We are living in a time when national governments are abdicating their responsibility on urgent issues. That is why cities are stepping up,”said New York City’s International Affairs Commissioner Penny Abeywardena.