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 Barring any last minute changes, U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon — who is seeking to re-energize the global climate change
debate and boost the United Nations' role — could make the
announcement as early as Friday, the sources said on the condition
of anonymity.
Bloomberg, a billionaire philanthropist who left office last month,
made combating climate change a key focus during his 12 years
leading the United States most populous city. He also advocated for
national climate change legislation.
Bloomberg has played a leading role in the C40 Cities Climate
Leadership Group, an international group of mayors created in 2005
and dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The C40 group,
of which Bloomberg is president of the board, is due to meet in
Johannesburg next week.
He announced last month that New York City's greenhouse gas
emissions have dropped by 19 percent since 2005, putting the city
nearly two-thirds of the way to meeting the goal that he set five
years ago.
In the climate change blueprint he launched in 2007, called PlaNYC
2030, Bloomberg set a goal to slash citywide emissions 30 percent by
2030 through a number of initiatives, such as requiring hybrid taxi
cabs, building bike lanes and retrofitting municipal buildings to
make them more energy efficient.
Bloomberg pledged to continue focusing on promoting his key causes — combating climate change, gun control and immigration — after
leaving office through his philanthropic work.
The United Nations will host a one-day climate change summit in New
York on September 23, 2014. Many developing nations want it to be a
deadline for rich countries to outline planned cuts in greenhouse
gases beyond 2020 as a key step towards a global climate deal in
2015.
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Last month, Ban appointed former Ghana President John Kufuor and
former Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg as special envoys
on climate change to drum up support for the planned September
conference.
Ever since the 2009 U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen failed to
secure a deal on a binding treaty on reducing carbon emissions, the
United Nations has been sidelined, U.N. diplomats and officials say.
Climate discussions have shifted away from the world body to
bilateral talks between key world powers and the Group of 20 club of
major developed and developing nations.
But Ban has long seen galvanizing support for global action on
climate change as key to his legacy as secretary-general, the
officials and diplomats say, and is eager to restore the United
Nations' relevance to the climate negotiations.
(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau;
editing by Bernard Orr)
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