UN delegates arrive (almost) empty-handed at NYC Climate Week

Entrepreneurs, investors look willing to go where political leaders fear to tread

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NEW YORK (Callaway Climate Insights) — Delegates to the United Nations Global Assembly arrive to a hot and traffic-choked Big Apple this week, in part to honor NY Climate Week, but conspicuously empty-handed on climate pledges.

UN week is always the most chaotic of the year on the streets of Manhattan. Police and security operations shut down vast swathes of roadways on the East Side where UN headquarters stands.

This will be the first year that the city’s controversial traffic congestion charge is in place, but from the looks of things here on the ground there seems to be little difference — at least as far as auto emissions are concerned.

Which makes NY a fitting backdrop to a climate event in which almost every country turns up empty-handed in terms of required new pledges or in the case of the host U.S., downright unwilling to even try.