The United Nations is inviting global leaders to present stronger climate plans for the next decade at a summit Wednesday that comes as the United States and other major polluters are backsliding on their commitments to confront global warming.
The meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York is an effort to secure new climate targets from individual countries ahead of the COP30 climate talks in Brazil in November. It comes as the European Union has struggled to agree on stronger goals amid internal divisions, and as the U.S. works to undermine climate action at home and internationally under President Donald Trump.
China is expected to deliver a target that could potentially be well below what analysts and some former U.S. officials have called for. It will open the summit followed by the EU, which will present a “statement of intent” that has kept it from being excluded.
But polluting economies India and Saudi Arabia are not on the guest list. Nor is the United States, which outlined its climate plans for 2035 at the end of then-President Joe Biden’s administration but has rapidly unraveled measures to meet them since Trump took office.
