The threat posed by global warming “has never been worse,” U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosa said at the start of climate talks in Poland, VOA news reports.
“This year is likely to be one of the four hottest years on record. Climate change impacts have never been worse. This reality is telling us that we need to much more,” she said Sunday.
Negotiators from nearly 200 nations are in the southern Polish city of Katowice for two weeks of talks on implementing the landmark 2015 Paris Accord. Signatories to that agreement pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions and limit the rise in global temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius by 2030.
“Looking from the outside perspective, it’s an impossible task,” Poland’s Deputy Environment Minister Michal Kurtyka told the Associated Press last week.
“The United Nations secretary-general is counting on all of us to deliver. There is no ‘Plan B'”
The climate change talks got a boost when 19 of 20 G-20 nations meeting in Buenos Aires reaffirmed their commitment to fighting climate change.
The United States was the only holdout. President Donald Trump has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement because of what he says is the economic damage the treaty’s provisions would cause.
Trump is a promoter of fossil fuels and nuclear power and has proposed renegotiating the Paris Accord – an idea many dismiss as impractical.
Host country Poland is expected to propose what it calls a “just transition” for the oil, gas, and coal industries to ease the financial blow from the move away from such polluting sources of energy.
Negotiators are also expected to put forth plans to help developing nations adapt to a warming climate.