Last week UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, opened the United Nation's annual climate summit, COP27 meeting this year in Egypt, with a dire warning: "We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing, Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing, global temperatures keep rising, and our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”At last year's conference in Scotland, countries recommitted to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to limit the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius. Despite these promises, the world is still not on track to meet that goal. Even in this year the earth’s rising temperatures have fueled extreme weather events. It’s poorer nations in the Global South that bear a disproportionate share of the burden. This year some of those nations have intensified demands for wealthier nations to pay climate reparations and establish a “loss and damages fund.”

President Joe Biden spoke on Friday and outlined U.S. commitments to cutting methane and carbon emissions, but he stopped short of committing any resources for global “loss and damages” due to the United States role as the world’s second largest producer of of greenhouse gasses.  

For more on this we spoke with Jean Su, Energy Justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, the co-author of the report, “The Climate President’s Emergency Powers.” And she is Co-Chair of Climate Action Network International.

For full transcript, see above.