today marks the start of Climate Week here in New York City, where more than 150 world leaders are gathering for the United Nations General Assembly. Some of them are coming directly from the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, including President Biden, set to address the forum Wednesday, a day later than usual. On Thursday, the Barbados prime minister is set to speak about her proposal for a new financial settlement for vulnerable countries struggling to pay off debt from climate disasters. Governments are also facing pressure to address their pledges to end fossil fuel subsidies amid soaring energy bills.
I would say it’s good to be with you, but we rarely have good news to discuss. And with these catastrophic events that we see playing out now in real time, we are witnessing the devastating consequences of climate change now. This isn’t 10 years into the future. It’s not way off in the Arctic. It’s where we live now. We are experiencing devastating consequences of past climate inaction, and it really drives home the importance of taking action now.
You know, the physics isn’t that difficult here. You make the planet warmer, you’re going to get more heat. You’re going to get more intense and more frequent heat waves, like we’ve seen this summer and every summer in recent history. You make the atmosphere warmer, it holds moisture, more moisture. So you get those flooding events. You get the sort of devastating flooding that we’re seeing right now with these landfalling hurricanes. You make the soils
— source democracynow.org | Sep 19, 2022
