UN: Joe Biden pledges to double climate aid to developing countries – live

World leaders gather for the UN general assembly in New York, with Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro taking stand against Covid vaccine mandates
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4.48pm BST

Joe Biden's headline announcement at the United Nations is a doubling of climate aid given by the US to developing countries - the total will top $11bn if Congress agrees - but beneath this there was tacit acknowledgment that the climate crisis is in danger of spinning dangerously out of control.

At times Biden struck an almost pleading note as he urged other countries to raise their ambitions to cut planet-heating emissions, with governments currently falling badly short in the effort to avert truly disastrous climate change. China, responsible for a quarter of global emissions, is firmly at odds with the US over trade and security issues. And domestically the president's main climate policies, packed into the $3.5tn reconciliation bill, risk being sunk by Senator Joe Manchin and Senate Republicans.

This year has brought widespread death and devastation from the borderless climate crisis," Biden said. We are fast approaching the point of no return in a literal sense. Will we meet the threat of the more challenging climate already ravaging every part of our world with extreme weather, or we will we suffer the merciless march of ever worsening droughts and floods, more intense fires and hurricanes, longer heatwaves and rising seas?"

But the lack of progress, just weeks before crucial UN climate talks in Scotland, is causing rising frustration and anger among leaders of poorer countries and environmental groups who warn that much of the world risks being condemned to a barely liveable future. We are on the edge of an abyss and moving in the wrong direction," admitted Antonio Guterres, secretary general of the UN. We must get serious, and we must act fast."

4.21pm BST

Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, president of the Maldives, spoke to the general assembly about what the nation has experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Our economy relies on welcoming tourists to these shores. We import nearly everything from food to medicine to the materials we build our shelters with. Having shut down our borders, we were faced with catastrophic outcomes," Solih said.