MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AFP) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Wednesday slammed participants in a major UN climate summit for their “hypocrisy,” accusing them of failing to address the root causes of the crisis and pointing to their use of private jets.
The world’s top business and political figures are gathered in Glasgow this week for COP26, which is aimed at forging an ambitious new climate agreement.
But Mexico’s leftist leader — also known as AMLO — dismissively compared the summit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, known for its eye-watering prices and elite chin-wagging.
“These summits resemble those in Davos,” said Lopez Obrador — among the heads of state who chose not to attend COP26 — describing WEF attendees as “technocrats and neoliberals.”
The world’s most powerful countries “increase their fuel production, at the same time that they hold summits for the protection of the environment,” he said. “And then they arrive in private planes.”
“Enough hypocrisy and fad. We must fight the massive monstrous inequality that exists in the world, that’s what I will tell the UN.”
Lopez Obrador, who has made only a handful of foreign trips since taking office in 2018, will travel to New York next week as Mexico takes over the presidency of the UN Security Council.
“If we want to protect the environment, we must make decisions, act, and not just talk,” he said, hailing major oil producer Mexico’s decision to invest $1.3 billion a year in reforestation.
The program — known as “Sowing Life” — aims to create 15,000 jobs planting a billion trees across Mexico’s 32 states.
© Agence France-Presse