Trudeau heads to UN general assembly as world faces ‘serious moment’

Russia's war in Ukraine grinds on relentlessly, the global angst augmented by last week's ominous meeting between President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

At the annual UN General Assembly, that traffic-snarling symposium of international hand-wringing and high dudgeon now underway in New York City, the peril of climate change is always a prominent topic.

But as Taylor Swift might say, it hits different after the summer of 2023.

The year saw a record-setting wildfire season in Canada, more than 11,000 dead from catastrophic flooding in Libya and a record 23 separate billion-dollar weather disasters in the U.S. in just the first eight months.

And it’s far from the only existential crisis that will confront Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when he arrives Tuesday for two days of meetings with world leaders, environmental crusaders and civil-society luminaries.

His trip comes on the heels of news Monday that Canadian intelligence agencies are investigating what Trudeau called “credible” information linking India’s government to the killing of a prominent Sikh leader in British Columbia.

Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on relentlessly, the global angst augmented by last week’s ominous meeting in Vladivostok between President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The uneasy truce of the UN’s own Black Sea grain deal has collapsed, all but cutting off the developing world from one of the planet’s most vital sources of food, cooking oil and fertilizer.

West Africa has seen no fewer than eight military coups since 2020, most recently in Niger and Gabon, while Haiti remains racked by political chaos and gang violence, all in the midst of an unchecked cholera outbreak.