Climate Summit In Egypt

A highway to climate hell’

World leaders are gathering this week in Egypt for the 27th annual United Nations climate talks, known as COP27, to wrestle with the climate crisis, amid other pressing challenges that threaten to set back already inadequate steps to pivot the global economy away from fossil fuels.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, itself financed by the sale of Russian gas, has unsettled the global energy market and spurred inflation and calls for more oil and gas drilling. Poor countries suffering from climate effects are increasingly frustrated with wealthy countries whose emissions are driving global warming. And relations between the two biggest polluters, the U.S. and China, have fallen to a new low.

Rishi Sunak, Britain’s new prime minister, told delegates that the Russian invasion of Ukraine should prompt developed countries to invest more heavily in renewable energy. “Putin’s abhorrent war in Ukraine and rising energy prices across the world are not a reason to go slow on climate change,” he said. “They are a reason to act faster.”

Quotable: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator,” said António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general. He underscored that climate change was not a separate issue that could be deferred but one linked to the crises of war, unrest and hunger  ©️ New York times