A UN biodiversity meeting is slugging it out in Montreal
Reaching an agreement will be even harder than it was over climate change
António Guterres, secretary-general of the UN, seems to spend most of his time delivering dire warnings. Recently, he has, Cassandra-like, presaged “nuclear annihilation”, a “raging food catastrophe” and “climate hell”. His speech on December 6th at the opening of the 15th conference of the parties to the UN convention on biological diversity (COP15), in Montreal, was characteristically catastrophic. In “treating nature like a toilet”, he said, “we are committing suicide by proxy”.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “A fair COP?”
From the December 17th 2022 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionMore from Science & technology
Does melatonin work for jet lag?
It can help. But it depends where you’re going
Training AI models might not need enormous data centres
Eventually, models could be trained without any dedicated hardware at all
How the Gulf’s rulers want to harness the power of science
A stronger R&D base, they hope, will transform their countries’ economies. Will their plan work?
Cancer vaccines are showing promise at last
Trials are under way against skin, brain and lung tumours
New firefighting tech is being trialled in Sardinia’s ancient forests
It could sniff out blazes long before they spread out of control
Can Jeff Bezos match Elon Musk in space?
After 25 years, Blue Origin finally heads to orbit, and hopes to become a contender in the private space race