By Elkie Braddick
‘Climate Forward’ is the annual climate event hosted by the New York Times, which talks with top world leaders, policymakers, business leaders and activists about climate change. Here were a few highlights of the event in 2025:
Hilda Heine, president of the Marshal Islands, said she was disappointed by President Trump’s speech at the United Nations, which discredited climate science. She drew attention to the active threat of flooding to the Marshall Islands caused by climate change, and how the islands would be completely submerged by 2050 if the world didn’t do its part. She said, ’The Pacific Island Forum.. have declared that climate change is the greatest security threat to the pacific region over and over again.’
Another spokesperson who critiqued Trump was Jake Sullivan, who was the former National Security Adviser in the Biden administration. He noted how Trump’s director of national intelligence had shut down a group responsible for the US government’s annual Global Trends report, which had examined the National Security implication of climate change.
Under the Biden administration, the group had issued a series of reports concluding that global warming would exacerbate the risk of food shortages, migration and conflicts around the world. Mr Sullivan implied that this move would ignore the needs of the military whose work is severely impacted by the climate crisis. He said, ‘You go to any man or woman with stars on their shoulders or general officers, and they will tell you the climate crisis is real and has an operational impact on them’.
An array of world leaders all responded to Trump’s dismissal of climate change with concern. It seems that other countries, as well as some top American figures, feel that Trump remains dangerously out of step with other countries on climate change, and seemingly has not seen or exposed himself to the significant effects it has on people’s lives around the globe.
Andrew Forrest the executive chairman of the mining company Fortescue said, ‘there’s real damage being done to people’s lives all over the world by your president’ and, ‘Come and see what’s happening to my land. Come and dive on these reefs… which are now devastated’.
His words mirror a wider call for the US president to acknowledge how harmful climate change and pollution are. Hopefully this event will trigger a productive response from Trump’s administration.