During the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations this week, low-lying island nation Vanuatu stepped up a fight to get the world to focus on combating global warming by calling for a fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty.
"The time is up — action is required now," Vanuatu's President Nikenike Vurobaravu told the UN General Assembly on Friday.
A UN climate science panel — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — has warned that global emissions are on track to blow past the 1.5 degrees C warming limit and reach some 3.2 degrees C by the end of century. "Pakistan has never seen a more stark and devastating example of the impact of global warming. Life in Pakistan has changed forever," Sharif told the General Assembly. "Nature has unleashed her fury on Pakistan, without looking ... at our carbon footprint."Around the world on Friday young activists rallied for climate action, staging protests from New Zealand and Japan to Germany and the streets of New York to demand rich countries pay for global warming damage to the poor.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said the least responsible for climate change are suffering the most., absorbing more carbon dioxide than we emit. And yet, we are the fourth most vulnerable country to climate change," he told the UN gathering.