'Time is running out to stop worst effects of warming'

At the UN climate summit, world leaders say time is running short to stop the worst effects of warming. Isabel Debre and Mauricio Savarese, of Associated Press, report

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WORLD leaders warned that time is running short for urgent and decisive action to prevent the worst effects of climate change, and blasted the United States for its retreat from those efforts, as they gathered at the edge of Brazil's Amazon rainforest for the annual United Nations climate summit.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened a gathering of heads of state in Belem, Brazil, with harsh words for world powers who he said "remain captive to the fossil fuel interests, rather than protecting the public interest".

Allowing global warming to exceed the key benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), laid out in the Paris Agreement, would represent a "moral failure and deadly negligence," Guterres said, warning that "even a temporary overshoot will have dramatic consequences... every fraction of a degree higher means more hunger, displacement and loss".

Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva sought to mobilise funds from world powers to halt the ongoing destruction of tropical rainforests and advance the many unmet promises made at previous summits.

But reduced participation with only half the heads of state in attendance as there were at last year's summit showcased global divisions and set a sombre tone. The leaders of the planet's three biggest polluters, China, the United States and India, were completely absent from the preliminary gathering ahead of climate talks that begin next week at the Conference of Parties, known as COP30.

In a rousing speech, Lula warned that the "window of opportunity we have to act is rapidly closing and said there was "no greater symbol of the environmental cause" than the Amazon rainforest.