Can U.N. summits save the planet? A faltering year of talks brings up questions about the process

Associated Press

In the past few months United Nations-sponsored negotiations to tackle climate change, plastic pollution, loss of global species and a growing number of deserts have either outright failed or come out with limited outcomes that didn’t address the scale of the problems. Experts called multilateral environmentalism broken because of a cumbersome consensus process, the power of the fossil fuel industry, geopolitical changes and the massive size of the problems they are trying to fix. Progress is being made, especially on climate change, but it’s too little, too slow and in stutter steps, United Nations officials and others said.