UN chief urges action to make Earth carbon neutral by 2050

UNITED NATIONS -- Leader after leader told the United Nations on Monday they will do more to prevent a warming world from reaching even more dangerous levels. But as they made their pledges at the Climate Action Summit, they conceded it was not enough.

Sixty-six countries have promised to have more ambitious climate goals, and 30 swore to be carbon neutral by midcentury, said Chilean President Sebastian Pinera Echenique, who is hosting the next climate negotiations later this year.

Heads of nations such as Finland and Germany promised to ban coal within a decade. Several also mentioned goals of climate neutrality -- when a country is not adding more heat-trapping carbon to the air than is being removed by plants and perhaps technology -- by 2050.

U.S. President Donald Trump dropped by, listened to German Chancellor Angela Merkel make detailed pledges, including going coal-free, and left without saying anything.

The United States did not ask to have someone speak at the summit, U.N. officials said. And Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had told countries they couldn't be on the agenda without making bold new proposals.

Even though there was no speech by Trump, who has denied climate change, called it a Chinese hoax and repealed U.S. carbon-reduction policies, he was talked about.

In a none-too-subtle jibe at Trump's plans to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, said countries "must honor our commitments and follow through on the Paris Agreement."

"The withdrawal of certain parties will not shake the collective goal of the world community," Wang said to applause.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the U.N.'s special climate envoy, thanked Trump for stopping by, adding it might prove useful "when you formulate climate policy," drawing a bit of laughter and applause on the floor of the General Assembly.

Before world leaders made their promises in three-minute speeches, 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg gave an emotional appeal in which she chided the leaders with the repeated phrase, "How dare you."

"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here," said Thunberg, who began a lone protest outside the Swedish parliament more than a year ago, culminating in Friday's global climate strikes. "I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you have come to us young people for hope. How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words."