Politics has 'weaponised' science: UN climate chief

The UN's climate chief on Tuesday said that the science of global warming had been "weaponised" by politics, a day after Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement.

Simon Stiell said that shifting geopolitical events could not change the hard facts that underpin climate change and the disastrous consequences linked to a warming planet.

Last year was the hottest on record, and the combined average temperature of 2023 and 2024 exceeded the 1.5 degrees Celsius benchmark set under the Paris climate accord for the first time.

Stiell said that support for climate science was "far, far more significant than those few voices that challenge" it.

"The science has actually been weaponised, and again that is reflective of the politics," he told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

On the first day of his second term as president, Trump announced that the United States would again withdraw from the Paris climate accord endorsed by nearly 200 nations.

Trump, who has expressed scepticism of climate change and global efforts to confront it, did the same thing during his first term but Joe Biden rejoined the pact.

"We've been here before," said Stiell.

But the world was undergoing an "unstoppable" energy transition that attracted $2 trillion for renewable power in 2024, he said, twice the amount invested in fossil fuels.

"Anyone who steps back from this significant forward momentum creates a vacuum that others will fill and will benefit from," Stiell added.

He said it was critical that these opportunities were better advertised "in a language that resonates with the hearts and minds of ordinary people all over the world".