Beating the Heat in the Neighborhood

The 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) kicked off mid-September in the New York-based UN headquarters. The General Debate portion of the session commenced on the 21st of the month. It’s a given that the nations’ representatives would present a multitude of topics and situations worthy of concern and attention — whether it’s socio-political issues or humanitarian crises regarding a singular or several regions; plus, they would certainly pick up where they left off from the outset of a global pandemic that had practically brought the world to a standstill. But as pressing as these matters are, this session will once again revisit — and lay precedence on — one of the most outspoken yet most neglected topics: climate change.

The irony of this particular session lies in its venue, or more accurately, the hosting country. The United States had a climatically rough year, with the country facing all incarnations of global warming — scorching wildfires and draughts throughout the West, freezing storms that incapacitated electrical grids in the South, and even flooding in the city where the UNGA is currently taking place. The country is its very own indicator of the worsening effects of climate change.

All of this didn’t happen instantaneously in one year either. This is a more conspicuous outset of negligence spanning several decades…