As world leaders gather for Climate Week, they are running out of time

It’s Climate Week in New York City — happening alongside the U.N. General Assembly — and it comes on the heels of a record-smashing hot summer in the northern hemisphere and ahead of what could be a dangerously underheated winter in Europe.

It’s a moment when China has seen its most severe heatwave on record, the war in Ukraine reinforced Western Europe’s overdependence on natural gas and flooding in Pakistan was labeled a “climate catastrophe” requiring “massive support.” And all of this just months after the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raised an alarm bell on the inadequacy of global action to date.

Taken together, it is another sign we’ve waited too long to get serious about building a global clean energy economy and embracing natural climate solutions.

These challenges also mean the Climate Week conversations on climate-smart food systems, natural climate solutions, corporate climate action and innovative policy tools take on new urgency as the world faces deepening scientific and political challenges.

In short, this is no normal year for this annual gathering of activists, academics, businesses and government officials. But Climate Week also arrives at a time of great progress, as we see major steps forward by many of the world’s leading economies.

To read the full post, please visit The Hill website, where this piece originally published.