China, EU preview COP30 goals at UN climate summit

MANHATTAN (CN) — World leaders — with the United States notably absent — made a push Wednesday for more international collaboration, investment in climate action and steps to mitigate climate injustice at a U.N. climate summit.

The high-level discussions at the 80th U.N. General Assembly laid a foundation for the COP30 climate talks in Belem, Brazil, in November. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Paris agreement, and member countries are set to submit new climate goals for the coming decade.

“It is time to ask whether the world will arrive in Belem with its homework done,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said at the top of the meeting.

Lula urged leaders to uphold the promises made under the Paris agreement, noting that without those commitments, Earth would be on track to a colossal 4-degree Celsius increase in temperature.

“Each broken commitment is an invitation to new isolated actions. The result is a vicious cycle of mistrust and paralysis. We need to restore confidence and conviction in collective mobilization,” he said.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has said existing climate pledges are nowhere near sufficient. According to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, current member state plans would cut global emissions by just 2.6% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels — a fraction of the 43% reduction scientists say is needed to keep global temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Still, leaders offered a message of hope and commitment at Wednesday’s summit.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe is on track to meet its 2030 goal of cutting carbon emissions by 55%. The bloc has already seen a 40% decrease since 1990, she said, and represents just 6% of global emissions.

“The clean transition is moving on, and let me assure you: Europe will stay the course on our climate ambition,” von der Leyen said.

The messaging was a sharp contrast to U.S. President Donald Trump’s Tuesday address, in which he knocked renewable energy efforts in European countries and called climate change a “con job.”

In the speech, which lasted for nearly an hour, Trump called mass immigration and renewable energy a “double-tailed monster” that “destroys everything in its wake.”

Leaders did not hear from the U.S., the world’s second-biggest polluter, during Wednesday’s summit — but the president of the People’s Republic of China, which holds the top spot for carbon emissions, was among the more than 100 representatives who addressed the group.

“Global climate governance is entering a key stage,” President Xi Jinping said.

Xi said China will, by 2035, reduce economy-side net greenhouse gases by 7% to 10% from its peak levels and increase the share of non-fossil fuels in its total energy consumption to over 30%.

He said the country will also increase wind and solar capacity; scale up its forest stock; expand in “new energy” vehicles and carbon emissions trading; and “basically establish a climate-adaptive society.”

Though some countries are “acting against” green energy, Xi said “the international community should stay focused on the right direction, remain unwavering in confidence, unremitting in actions and unrelenting in intensity.”

Xi also touched on climate justice, saying developed countries should take the lead and respect the rights of developing nations.

“Fairness and equity should be upheld,” he said. “The transition should serve to narrow, rather than widen, the north-south gap.”

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