The world’s top diplomat, António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, has been unusually outspoken in his broadsides of late against fossil fuel producers. He accused them of “profiting from destruction.” He has called on governments to stop funding coal and slow new oil and gas projects. “History is coming for the planet destroyers,” he said.
But who are these “planet destroyers”? He doesn’t name her.
Not China, the world’s coal giant. Not Britain or the United States, both of which have ambitious climate laws but continue to issue new oil and gas permits. Not the United Arab Emirates, a petrostate where a state-owned oil company is hosting the upcoming United Nations climate talks – a move that activists have called undermining the talks’ very legitimacy.
The contradictions highlight not only the limitations for Mr. Guterres, a 74-year-old politician from Portugal who has made climate change his core issue, but also the shortcomings of the diplomatic playbook on an issue as pressing as global warming.
“The rules of multilateral diplomacy and multilateral summits are not suited to the rapid and effective response we need,” said Richard Gowan, who decodes United Nations rituals for the International Crisis Group.
The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement only requires countries to set voluntary targets to combat climate pollution. The agreements that emerge from the annual climate negotiations are regularly watered down as every country, including the proponents of coal, oil and gas, has to agree on every word and every comma.
The Secretary General can persuade but not order, urge but not enforce. He does not name specific countries, even if the United Nations Charter does not prevent him from doing so.
Despite his admonitions, governments have only increased their fossil fuel subsidies to a record $7 trillion in 2022. Few countries have concrete plans to transition their economies away from fossil fuels, and many rely directly or indirectly on revenues from coal, oil and gas. The human toll of climate change continues to increase.
“He interpreted his role as a kind of truthteller,” said Rachel Kyte, a former United Nations climate diplomat and professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “The powers available to him as secretary-general are great but limited.”
This week he shows a diplomatic wink on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. At the Climate Ambition Summit he is hosting on Wednesday, he will only pass the microphone to countries that have complied with his request, and then only if they send a senior leader to show they are taking the summit seriously . “A naming and shaming tool that doesn’t actually require naming and shaming anyone,” Mr. Gowan said.
There have been intense diplomatic disputes over who will be added to the list. More than 100 countries have submitted requests to speak, and Mr. Guterres’ advisers have in turn requested more information to prove that they deserve to be on the list. Some people asked, what did you do to phase out coal? How much climate finance did you offer? Are you still issuing new oil and gas permits? And so forth.
“It’s nice to see Guterres trying to withstand the fire,” said Mohamed Adow, a Kenyan activist.
Mr Guterres waited until the last minute to publish the list of speakers.
Expect the unpleasant.
John Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy, is expected to attend but not speak. (Mr. Guterres gives the microphone only to senior heads of state.) It is unclear whether the head of China’s delegation this year, Vice President Han Zheng, will take on a speaking role. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has secured the microphone. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is not coming to the General Assembly conclave at all. Sultan al-Jaber, the head of the Emirati oil company and host of the next climate talks, is scheduled to give a speech.
Mr Guterres will also invite companies with what he calls “credible” targets to reduce their climate emissions to take part. Expect to count them with the fingers of one hand.
Mr. Guterres, who led the United Nations refugee agency for 10 years before being tapped for the top job, did not always make climate change a central issue.
In fact, he didn’t talk about it when he was elected head of the United Nations in 2016. Climate was considered the most important issue of his predecessor, Ban Ki-moon, who pushed through the Paris Agreement in 2015. Mr. Guterres instead spoke about the war in Syria, terrorism and gender parity in the United Nations. (His election disappointed those who had pushed for a woman to lead the world organization for the first time in its 70-year history.)
In 2018 there was a change. At this year’s General Assembly, he described climate change as “the defining issue of our time.” In 2019, he invited climate activist Greta Thunberg to the General Assembly, whose raw anger at world leaders (“How dare you?” she railed against world leaders) caused a social media stir. Sparked conflict with President Donald J. Trump, who held office The United States is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.
For his part, Mr. Guterres carefully avoided criticizing the United States by name.
In 2022, as oil companies made record profits following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he toughened his language. “We must hold fossil fuel companies and their makers accountable,” he told world leaders at the General Assembly. He called for a tax on windfall profits, urged countries to suspend fossil fuel subsidies and appointed a committee to issue guidelines for private companies on “greenwashing.”
This year he weighed in on the contentious debate between those who want greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas projects to be captured and stored, or “reduced,” and those who want to keep oil and gas in the ground entirely. “The problem is not just fossil fuel emissions. It’s fossil fuels, period,” Mr. Guterres said in June.
Reaction from the private sector has been mixed, said Paul Simpson, founder and former head of CDP, a nongovernmental group that works with companies to combat their climate pollution. Some leaders say privately that Mr. Guterres is right to call for a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, while others note that no matter what he says, most national governments still lack concrete energy transition plans.
“The question really is: How effective is the United Nations?” Mr. Simpson said. “It has the ability to make governments focus and plan. But the UN itself has no teeth, so national governments and companies must act.”