Climate Week NYC: news and protests surrounding the UN Climate Ambition Summit – The Verge

How to assess ‘sustainable’ products and your own impact as a consumer

2023-09-22T09:00:00-04:00

Some of Apple’s new watches will be carbon neutral, the company announced this month. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

These days, brands are all about selling you something more sustainable. In just the past week, we've seen Apple launch its first carbon-neutral products and Amazon start to share pollution reports for individual devices.

GM sponsored a major hub for events during New York City's Climate Week, coinciding with a United Nations climate summit. I walked past its electric vehicles displayed in a conference hall outside a panel about living in a changing climate.

Down the hall, I grabbed "locally sourced, plant-based nourishments" from a cafeteria featuring recipes by Hellmann's (maker of the mayonnaise). Trying to decide between a chicken far …

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Joe Biden launches climate and jobs programs — but no new pollution-cutting goals

2023-09-20T10:00:00-04:00

US President Joe Biden addresses the 78th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City on September 19th, 2023. | Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP via Getty Images

The Biden administration launched new climate funding and jobs programs today as world leaders - minus Joe Biden - gather for the Climate Ambition Summit in New York. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced $4.6 billion in new funding for state, local, and tribal clean energy programs. Plus, details have finally emerged for a long-awaited American Climate Corps.

But Biden is expected to skip the United Nations climate summit today, a conspicuous absence since UN Secretary-General António Guterres stipulated that leaders present "credible, serious and new climate action" in order to participate. Biden, who came to New York this w …

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Protesters take over NYC streets to tell Joe Biden to ‘end fossil fuels’

2023-09-18T14:10:46-04:00

Princess Daazhraii Johnson, a member of the Neets'aii Gwich'in, hasn't been able to fish at her family's traditional camp on the Yukon River in Alaska for years. Salmon have dwindled with rising temperatures, a consequence of burning fossil fuels. That's one reason why Johnson was one of thousands of people who took to the streets in New York over the past 24 hours to demand an end to oil, coal, and gas.

The aim is to put pressure on President Joe Biden and other world leaders gathering in the city this week for the United Nations General Assembly. Notably, Biden isn't expected to attend the UN Climate Ambition Summit on Wednesday. To parti …

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‘Bodies on the line’: why climate protesters risked arrest to block BlackRock

2023-09-14T09:20:05-04:00

NYPD officers arrested protesters who gathered outside BlackRock headquarters in Manhattan on September 13th, 2023.

Alfredo Angulo is the last person standing in the middle of the street, defying police to block the entrance to BlackRock headquarters in New York City yesterday. Emblazoned in red on their green T-shirt: a family standing between homes and an industrial building billowing smoke. It's a scene Angulo's all too familiar with, having grown up in the refinery town of Richmond, California.

"I could see the refinery from my kitchen window, see the smokestacks," Angulo, who's in New York City for events surrounding United Nations conferences this month, tells The Verge. "I'm here as a frontline community member to say that we will not be a sacrifi …

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The world’s first climate change report card is in

2023-09-08T12:25:07-04:00

The nations of the world have to seriously ramp up their clean energy ambitions because time is running out to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement, a sweeping new United Nations report card says.

It's the first "Global Stocktake" of the progress nearly 200 countries have made since they adopted the Paris agreement in 2015. By pushing nations to slash their greenhouse gas emissions, the global accord strives to avoid climate change so extreme that life on Earth would struggle to adapt.

The planet has gotten about 1.2 degrees Celsius hotter since the Industrial Revolution, and that's already been enough to cause more extreme weathe …

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