The United Nations General Assembly kicked off its 74th session in September 2019 with the United Nations Climate Action Summit. The summit was meant to highlight commitments by member states to slow global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, in line with warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Leading up to the event, the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had urged governments to prepare to discuss their ideas for reaching carbon neutrality by the year 2050, specifically recommending that states prepare plans related to reforestation and carbon pricing.
66 nations and nearly 100 companies made firm commitments to reach net-zero carbon emissions, and numerous other nations announced that they were currently formulating plans to comply with the Paris Climate Accord, to be revealed at a later date. The U.S. and China, currently two of the world’s largest carbon emitters, made no concrete commitments to reduce their carbon footprint at the summit.
