The absence of major world leaders devalues the climate conference in Turkey

“Fossil fuels must disappear, like dinosaurs,” says António Guterres
The absence of major world leaders at the climate summit in Antalya (Turkey) has greatly devalued and downplayed the importance of this conference on climate change. The heads of government of the two main gas-emitting powers, China and the US, will not be present in Antalya. Xi Jinping is rarely seen at a climate summit, and Donald Trump last year ordered his country’s withdrawal from the Climate Change Convention, something that materialised last January. The same is true of the heads of government of India (third largest gas emitter, Russia (5th) and Japan (6th), as well as those of Canada, Mark Carney, and several European countries, including Emmanuel Macron of France and Friedrich Merz of Germany. On the other hand, yesterday the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the president of Brazil, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, spoke. Finally, the President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, has given up traveling to that Turkish coastal city in his first absence from a climate summit, since this Friday begins the campaign for the general elections on November 29. The last head of a Spanish government to be absent from a climate conference was Mariano Rajoy in 2017 in Bonn.

Continue reading in Lavanguardia