THE head of this year’s United Nations climate talks called today for governments and businesses to tackle global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in all regions and sectors.

Sultan al-Jaber said that urgent action was needed if world leaders want to stop the planet from passing a key temperature limit agreed on more than seven years ago.

Mr Jaber of the United Arab Emirates, who also heads one of the country’s state oil companies, told senior officials from Europe, Canada and China gathered in Brussels that record-breaking heat seen across the world recently shows the need for urgent action to curb emissions.

Laying out his strategy for the upcoming Cop28 global climate talks in Dubai this autumn, Mr Jaber said that leaders “must be brutally honest” about what has caused the sharp rise in temperatures since pre-industrial times and how to stop them from climbing further.

While many fossil fuel companies have pledged to reduce direct and indirect emissions from their operations, many have refused to take responsibility for so-called scope three emissions resulting from sources they don’t own or control, such as consumers using their gas. 

The latter make up the majority of emissions, and cutting those effectively means reducing demand for fossil fuels.

“We need to attack all emissions, everywhere,” Mr Jaber said.

He said that he was planning to bring together governments, major energy producers and heavy emitting industries to develop a practical plan for limiting global warming to 1.5°C, in line with the 2015 Paris climate accord.

Scientists say that achieving this target requires halving global emissions by 2030 and current efforts are far off track.

Mr Jaber urged governments to come forward with more ambitious national targets for cutting emissions in the next few months. 

Illari Noriega of the anti-poverty group Christian Aid said: “The climate is showing that we need to be acting far far quicker than the current slow progress.

“People are dying due to terrible drought in East Africa, more than 100 million people are now under a heat warning in the United States and a road worker in Italy became the latest fatality of a lethal heatwave across Europe this week.”

Petter Lyden, of the campaign group Germanwatch, said: “What we need to see at Cop28 is a commitment by governments to phasing out all fossil fuels, since that is the only way to keep the 1.5°C target alive.”