UN chief urges action to make Earth carbon neutral by 2050

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Leader after leader told the United Nations on Monday that 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Even though there was no speech by Trump, who has denied climate change, called it a Chinese hoax and repealed U.S. carbon-reduction policies, he was talked about.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 state councilor 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 that it might...