COP28: UK’s King Charles III urges world leaders to make climate summit a turning point
Chris Uba
The United Kingdom’s monarch, King Charles III on Friday, Dec 1 ,told world leaders who gathered in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates , to make the COP28 climate summit a “turning point”.
The monarch warned that despite some progress “we remain so dreadfully far off track”.
“Some important progress has been made but it worries me greatly that we remain so dreadfully far off track,” he said, adding, “we are taking the natural world outside balanced norms and limits and into dangerous uncharted territory,” he noted.
He called for “genuine transformational action”, a day after the meeting opened with stark warnings on global warming.
Climate change dangers, according to the King, are “no longer distant risks,” as he recalls communities across the commonwealth that are currently “unable to withstand repeated shocks.”
He claims that natural disasters have devastated vulnerable island nations, and that floods in many parts of India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are unprecedented.
On Friday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told world leaders that humans are now experiencing real-time climate collapse, confirming that 2023 will be the hottest year on record.
The United Arab Emirates’ President, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has announced the creation of a $30 billion fund for “global climate solutions.”
It comes on the heels of an unexpected early agreement on Thursday, in which countries committed $420 million to a fund for nations suffering from the effects of climate change.
Today’s speakers include Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Greenhouse gas emissions that cause the Earth to heat up continue to rise, but scientists say they must be cut in half in the next seven years.
More than 170 world leaders are due at COP28, but Chinese President Xi Jinping and United States President Joe Biden ,whose countries are said to be ‘the world’s biggest polluters’ are absent at the gathering.
