I guess we'll just give up

A recent UN analysis of country’s actions to reduce planet-heating emissions show the world is well off track to avoid breaching agreed temperature limits, unleashing worsening heatwaves, droughts and floods.

[...]

The climate ambition summit, convened by António Guterres, the UN’s secretary general, will feature more than 100 national governments who have traveled to New York to outline renewed plans to curb global heating and help people adapt to its impacts. The UN has said the event will “showcase first movers and doers” among countries most willing to act on the climate crisis.

But the summit has failed to attract the leaders of the two biggest carbon emitters, with neither Joe Biden, the US president, nor Xi Jinping, president of China, attending. Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, are also missing the gathering.

  Guardian

Fuck it. We can't do anything about it. Too late.

“This is the biggest challenge civilization has ever faced and yet we can’t get the response we need. I can’t tell you how I feel about them just not showing up. It’s difficult to be optimistic, we are in a terrible place.” [Sir David King, the UK’s former chief scientific adviser]

[...]

“It’s an embarrassing gap. National leaders are just pointing fingers at each other over the lack of progress. Given the events of this summer, where things have just spiraled out of control, you’d think that would concentrate minds.” [Alden Meyer, an expert in international climate negotiations at E3G]

I don't know why you'd think that. We've known about this issue for decades. There was a time we might have been able to do something about it, but powerful people were getting too rich off NOT doing something about it.

Biden did address the climate crisis in his own speech to the UN on Tuesday, in which he lamented a year of heatwaves, wildfires and drought. “Taken together these snapshots tell an urgent story of what awaits us if we fail to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and begin to climate-proof our world,” said Biden. “From day one of my administration the United States has treated this crisis as the existential threat that it is, not only to us, but to all of humanity.”

And to show how urgent and important this issue is, he won't be attending the UN summit.

While the Biden administration has implemented the Inflation Reduction Act, which is expected to radically scale up renewable energy, it has also allowed a number of major new oil and gas projects. Biden has also been criticized for not declaring a climate emergency, despite claiming that he has done so in practice.

[...]

It emerged on Tuesday that [Prime Minister Rishi] Sunak is planning to row back on some of his government’s net-zero policies before the UK’s next general election such as delaying a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 11:03 am:

Let's see it happen, be funded, and well-advertised.