Climate talks start with call for faster action as US absent

United Nations (UN). climate negotiations began on Monday on the edge of the Brazilian Amazon as leaders pushed for accelerating efforts to curb global warming by drastically reducing the carbon pollution that causes it. But top US negotiators were absent.

- AP

Negotiators can't forget that "the climate emergency is an increase of inequality," host President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told them. He said he picked the host city of Belem instead of "a finished city" to drive home the impact that warming has on the Amazon and on poverty.

"The increase of the global temperature is spreading pain and devastation especially amongst the most vulnerable populations," he told the conference known as COP30.

This year's talks aren't expected to end with any ambitious new deal. Instead, organizers and analysts frame this year's conference as the "implementation COP." Countries had homework: Show up with their updated national plans to fight climate change.