World leaders in New York to grapple with climate. Fuel prices, AI and disasters complicate things
NEW YORK — World and business leaders gathering this week in New York are grappling with the increasingly urgent costs of climate change, soaring energy prices and the human toll from this summer’s oppressive heat waves, prolific wildfires and a catastrophic Nepal flood.
Every year as top government officials attend the United Nations General Assembly and business executives flock to New York City Climate Week sessions, global warming generates lots of talk but little action.
This time two new forces — the rise of energy-hungry artificial intelligence and data centers and higher fossil fuel prices from wars in Iran and Ukraine — should change the discussion, experts and activists said. That's on top of the usual climate-driven disasters that reached new levels of destruction, with more than 1,300 killed in sudden flooding caused by a collapsing glacier on the Nepal-China border.
“We’ve gone from seeing the fingerprints of climate change in individual events to seeing the handprint of climate change on the whole world,” said scientist Bill Hare, CEO of the organization Climate Analytics.
Climate change is “driving up food prices and wider inflation,” U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell said on Monday. “Billions of people around the world are realizing that fossil fuel dependence is hitting them hard at the fuel pump.”
Protests about high prices have sparked worldwide. In the U.S., consumer confidence is plunging while gas prices have reached record highs. Stiell said energy shortages due to the Iran war have cost American consumers more than $100 billion in higher fuel prices.
Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, said there are two climate stories happening at the same time: “One is extremely hopeful. Renewable energy is booming, technology is improving and the economics of clean energy increasingly make sense without anyone having to make a moral argument for it.”
“The other is terrifying. Climate impacts are accelerating faster than our political and financial systems are responding,” Adow said. “New York needs to bring those two stories together.”
During a Climate Week event, Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said “the global community cannot afford to be frozen in time while the world warms around us.”
The environmental footprint of artificial intelligence and data centers is a big topic this week.
That's because of the fear that the data center boom will mean a surge in fossil fuels, even though data centers can be powered by renewable energy.
U.N. officials are blunt in describing the matter.
“Energy-guzzling artificial intelligence is driving up planet-heating pollution from coal, oil and gas, while ratcheting up energy costs for households and businesses,” Stiell said. “AI leaders are now on thin ice when it comes to license to operate, and sinking deep underwater when it comes to public support.”
But at a business-oriented Climate Week kickoff event, Siemens Head of Sustainability Eva Riesenhuber and MIT Vice President for Energy and Climate Evelyn Wang said AI is too important to humanity, and it will help tackle climate change. They predicted that eventually data centers will not add to the world's carbon dioxide emissions or use extra water. Wang told the Associated Press that data centers are five years away from being water neutral and about a decade away from no longer adding to the warming problem.
Data centers adding to climate and water problems “is not forever,” Wang said. “We're not that far away.”
Acknowledging the strain on resources, Riesenhuber said, “we are racing to mitigate this as fast as possible because we are hooked on the intelligence, and we do need the intelligence to design the future that this planet needs.”
The AI issue touches on fairness, as well as the growing gap between rich and poor, said Jennifer Morgan, an analyst at Tufts University. The issue represents more construction in people’s backyards, which reaches people who are less worried about climate change, she said.
AI is becoming more vilified in climate talks than the fossil fuel industry, which “has always been good at deflection,” Morgan said.
There will be several AI protests throughout the week.
The Turkish government, which is running UN climate negotiations scheduled for November, announced the Antalya Pledge on Artificial Intelligence, a political promise on managing the powering and deployment of AI for nations to join. No further details were offered on this pledge.
The world can still meet its 2023 goal of tripling renewable power capacity by the end of the decade, but it must move much faster, according to a new report released Monday.
The International Renewable Energy Agency, the Global Renewables Alliance and Turkey — as the host of this year’s U.N. climate talks — found that despite record growth in renewables last year, the world must build more renewable power capacity from 2026 to 2030 than in all previous years combined.
The amount of renewable power added globally peaked at 693 gigawatts in 2025, about half the installed power in the U.S., IRENA found. At the same time, there was a sharp rebound of fossil fuels when compared to 2024 driven by China adding coal power.
“The journey so far on renewables is remarkable,” said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “It’s particularly impressive given that it’s succeeding despite unfair competition. Because it’s competing with heavily-subsidized fossil fuel-based energy and electricity systems.”
Unfortunately, Rockström said, renewables are meeting a growing demand for electricity but not “bending the curve” to reduce oil, coal or gas use — which is necessary to cut carbon pollution and meet climate targets.
Paradoxically, military action waged by U.S. President Donald Trump in Venezuela and Iran and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Ukraine — both big fossil fuel advocates — have caused oil and gas shortages that have driven up prices, spurring countries to switch to renewables faster, he explained.
United Kingdom Secretary of State Edward Miliband said Monday that transitioning to clean energy isn't just about jobs or energy security — it's also about national security.
“My argument to you today is we need to take the next step and recognize the national security imperative too,” he said.
The climate breakdown “must be an issue for foreign ministers and prime ministers, as well as energy and climate ministers. The security community, not just the activist community. The generals, not just the green campaigners,” he said.
