Leaders turn up the heat on fossil fuels at Amazon climate summit

AFP | Belem World

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World leaders will meet for a second day of climate talks in the Brazilian Amazon yesterday after fiery speeches and renewed criticism of Big Oil marked the opening session.

Dozens of ministers and several heads of state and government, including those of Spain, Germany and Namibia, will meet in Belem just before the United Nations’ (UN) annual two-week conference, COP30, which starts on Monday.

Evidence of the climate crisis, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, has never been clearer: the past 11 years have been the hottest on record and marked by intensifying hurricanes, heat waves and wildfires.

UN chief Antonio Guterres and a series of national leaders said on Thursday that the world will fail to keep global warming below 1.5C, the Paris Agreement’s primary target set a decade ago, but said they have not yet given up on its fallback goal of 2C.

The absence of leaders from the world’s biggest polluters, including the United States, where President Donald Trump has dismissed climate science as a “con job,” cast a shadow over talks, but also catalyzed calls for greater mobilization.