UN releases list of leaders attending climate summit

NEW YORK, Sept. 14 (UPI) -- The UN has released a list of world leaders who will be attending their climate change summit. President Barack Obama will be in attendance, and it will take place in New York on September 23, which is during the Climate Week NYC activities. French President Francois Hollande, British Prime Minister David Cameron and South Korean President Park Geun-hye will also attend. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President Xi Jinping of China will not be attending, but they will be sending lower level representatives.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is not concerned the leaders of China and India will not be attending. "The fact is that they had fully intended to be represented at the top level and for reasons that have nothing to do with the climate summit at the at the last minute they are not able to be there," she said in a press conference. The amount of representatives attending the event slates it to be the largest summit regarding climate change in history. If leaders are to enact changes in policy that will prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, emissions have to be at almost zero by the end of this century. That being said, scientists claim 2013 showed the largest increase in CO2 in one year for the past 20 years.