World leaders urged to stop ‘messing around’ in the face of rising temperature disaster

World leaders must “stop messing around and start taking action” to cut carbon emissions as rapidly rising temperatures this year have brought everyone to the brink of disaster, the UN’s top climate official has warned.

According to The Guardian, no country can consider itself immune from disaster, said Simon Still, who will oversee the crucial Cop28 climate summit, which starts next week. Dozens of world leaders will descend on Dubai for tense talks on how to handle the crisis.

“We are used to talking about protecting people on distant front lines. We’ve now reached the point where we’re all on the front lines,” Still said, speaking exclusively to The Guardian ahead of the summit. “Yet most governments are still taking a walk when they need to run headlong.”

Global temperatures have broken new records in recent months, making 2023 the hottest year on record, and dangerously close to the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold above pre-industrial levels that countries have agreed to adhere to. Temperatures are now approaching a “hellish” rise of 3°C unless urgent and radical action is taken, but greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

Still argues that it is still possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to stay within the critical limit, but any further delay would be dangerous.

“Every year of small steps we’ve taken up to this point means we need to make big leaps every year after that if we want to stay in this race,” he said.

The two-week Cop28 talks begin this Thursday in Dubai, hosted by the United Arab Emirates, a major oil and gas producing country. It will bring together dozens of world leaders, senior ministers and officials from 198 countries, as well as some 70,000 delegates, making it the largest annual conference of the parties (COP) held under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is expected to attend the event, while King Charles III will give opening remarks along with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The Pope, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will also be there, and an invitation has been extended to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The presidents of the world’s two largest greenhouse gas-emitting countries, Joe Biden of the United States and Xi Jinping of China, are not expected to attend the summit, but their envoys John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua have pledged their close cooperation ahead of the talks.

Sultan Al Jaber, head of the UAE’s national oil company Adnoc, will chair the talks. Al-Jaber was heavily criticized by Green campaigners for his dual role, but Still said it was a “red herring”.

“This is not the first climate summit hosted by a fossil fuel country, and it certainly won’t be the last. Every country, even those that are major oil producers, has a role to play,” he said. “What’s important is the messages and signals that the new president is sending are about the need for urgent action and a focus on how we accelerate the transition to a new decarbonized world.”

Fossil fuel executives are likely to be in full attendance at the summit.

Still noted: “It is important that we recognize that the fossil fuel industry must be part of the solution. We know what the problems are. But in order to move the conversation from what needs to be done to how it needs to be done, the fossil fuel industry needs to be part of the conversation.”

But he insists these companies needed to show they were serious about moving the world to a zero-carbon economy. “Their participation in the process must be legitimate, must demonstrate the necessary actions that will allow us to move away from our current dependence on fossil fuels and move to a new business model based on decarbonization,” he said.

One of the key issues at the summit will be providing funds to rescue and rehabilitate the poorest and most vulnerable communities when they are hit by climate disaster. The lack of funding for these losses and damages has been a long-standing problem for developing countries, but earlier this month the countries agreed on a plan to create a fund.

However, rich countries have yet to pledge contributions to the fund. Still called on world leaders to make commitments. “A fund created without capitalizing resources will not take us to where we need to be. This opportunity for donors to send strong signals about how the fund will be capitalized and the extent of that capitalization is offered at this conference,” he said.

Governments will be presented with a global assessment of how little progress has been made in cutting emissions since the 2015 Paris Agreement and how far the world is from meeting the Paris target of limiting global warming to 1.5C, after which scientists warn the consequences of the climate crisis will quickly become catastrophic and irreversible.

Still said governments should list and implement “solutions, solutions, solutions” that they believe will work, such as renewable energy, electrification of transport and decarbonization of the global economy. He emphasized: “We continue to talk about hope, but hope can only be created if there are signs of implementation, of action. I believe this is the message that ordinary people struggling with the effects of climate change expect from world leaders.”