COP27 highlights U.N. chief calls for global climate pact, warning of ‘highway to climate hell’

Biden administration officials are working to make climate change part of potential discussions between the president and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 summit scheduled in Bali, Indonesia, this month, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks have not been formally announced.

U.S. officials have publicly said they are working on such a meeting. It would aim to ease friction between the two world powers that have been increasingly at odds over trade, the pandemic, human rights and the future of Taiwan.

Although this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference will be in a new setting, in many other ways the conference will probably feel like deja vu. For almost three decades, governments have met to discuss the problem of climate change and tried to work toward a solution that will keep global warming from topping 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). They have negotiated, signed treaties, reneged on those treaties and signed new ones.

And almost every year, carbon emissions have continued to climb.

I spent much of this year reporting from Ukraine, so when country pavilions opened at COP27 on Monday, I knew which one I wanted to visit first. This is Ukraine’s first time having a pavilion at any COP — a feat the country managed to pull together despite the war. These displays are essentially designated nooks where countries can decorate a small area. Ukraine’s was simple but among the most striking I saw today: Showcased in a small, illuminated shelf on the wall was a piece of a tree trunk. When I looked closer, I saw pieces of shrapnel still embedded in the wood.

Last fall, at a high-profile global climate summit in Scotland, the countries of the world embraced what seemed like a significant commitment in the quest to combat climate change.

Acknowledging that progress had been too slow, leaders agreed to “revisit and strengthen” their national climate targets if possible over the coming year — rather than waiting every five years, as envisioned under the 2015 Paris climate accord. But as the world prepares to reconvene in Egypt this month for COP27, the annual U.N. climate change conference, almost none of the globe’s biggest emitters have come forward with stronger commitments. Few nations overall have ramped up their ambition, despite another year of floods, fires and other climate-related catastrophes.

Leaders from some of the world’s biggest emitters are skipping the climate talks underway in Egypt, compounding a sense that major breakthroughs are unlikely at this year’s conclave.

The world’s biggest emitter, China, isn’t sending top leaders. Nor are other emissions-heavy countries including Japan, India, Australia and Canada. That’s a contrast from last year, when the previous installment of climate talks in Glasgow felt like a star-studded event amid excitement that the Biden administration was ready to reengage on climate issues following former president Donald Trump’s climate-skeptic term in office.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt— British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters at COP27 that he plans to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi on Monday and will raise the case of British-Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abdel Fattah.

“I am hoping to see President Sissi later today, when I will of course raise this issue,” he said. “It’s something that not just the United Kingdom but many countries want to see resolved.”

Abdel Fattah, a software engineer and activist who gained fame during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, has spent most of the past decade behind bars. He went on hunger strike last spring, eating only 100 calories per day. He has withheld all food since Nov. 1 and stopped drinking water on Sunday.

At least two speakers at the World Leaders Summit called for the need to unlock private sector funding to address key climate change issues, such as “loss and damage” and financing the transition to renewable energy in developing countries. In their respective remarks, former U.S. vice president Al Gore and Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley both highlighted the importance of having access to private capital.

“We have to remove the barriers to the trillions needed for climate finance and the scale of what is needed can only be provided by the private sector,” Gore said in a fervent speech. “I support governments paying money for loss and damage and adaptation, but let’s be very clear that that’s the matter of billions or tens of billions."

Last year, you could barely walk 10 blocks in Glasgow without coming across a protester dressed in an inflatable dinosaur costume or a literal flotilla of activists arriving by sailboat. Everyday Glaswegians had strong opinions about climate change, and voiced them — loudly.

But Egypt has strict rules surrounding public gatherings and a record of jailing activists. Protests this year will only be allowed in a designated area far from the main conference facility. And the government is tightly controlling access to Sharm, meaning regular Egyptians will have little opportunity to engage with the conference, even as it holds the attention of the world.

The differences between last year’s conference in Glasgow and this year in Sharm el-Sheikh are stark.

Whereas last year’s conference was in the middle of a bustling city, Sharm el-Sheikh is a resort town on the Sinai Peninsula, perched between the desert and the Red Sea. It’s about as far as you can get from rainy, chilly Scotland. But the differences go much deeper than the weather. The start of the Glasgow conference had an air of optimism and ambition. It was the first COP in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. was back at the negotiating table after being mostly absent during the Trump administration. So many world leaders came and made flashy pledges to do things like reverse deforestation and reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt— The phrase “Loss and damage” — which refers to irreversible harms caused by climate change — was on everybody’s lips Monday as world leaders converged in Egypt for COP27.

But nowhere were those words more freighted with meaning than at the country pavilion for Pakistan, which earlier this year suffered historic floods from a climate-fueled monsoon that left tens of millions of people displaced and one third of the country under water.

In a sign of the issue’s importance, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke at the pavilion alongside Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif to call for the establishment of “institutional frameworks,” including financial support, to address loss and damage in the developing world.