UN chief warns of 'gates to hell' in climate summit, but carbon polluting nations stay silent

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The head of the United Nations warned Wednesday that the “gates of hell” are at hand as climate change intensifies, and top international officials said the world's leaders still aren’t doing nearly enough to curb pollution of heat-trapping gases. They pleaded with major emitting nations to do more.

Those nations remained silent. They weren't allowed to speak because, organizers said, they had no new actions to take.

The only countries that touted their efforts — “first movers and doers,” the United Nations called them — were responsible for just one-ninth of the world's annual carbon pollution.

“Humanity has opened the gates to hell,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Wednesday, opening a special climate ambition summit with yet another plea for action. “ Horrendous heat is having horrendous effects. Distraught farmers watching crops carried away by floods. Sweltering temperatures spawning disease. And thousands fleeing in fear as historic fires rage.”

Guterres convened the summit with the idea that only world leaders who came with new concrete actions would get to address their peers on the issue. But leaders of the countries that produce the most heat-trapping gases themselves chose not to even ask.

Heads of state from China, the United States, India, Russia, the United Kingdom and France all skipped the summit. The United States, which has put the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the decades, sent its climate envoy, John Kerry, to the summit even though President Joe Biden was in town. Then the United Nations didn't give Kerry a speaking spot. But California Gov. Gavin Newsom was given the space to speak and tout his state's efforts.

The 32 national leaders who did qualify represent only 11% of the world's carbon...