On January 31, 2014 former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg was appointed to be the UN "special envoy for cities and climate change". According to UN officials and diplomats, the appointment is part of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's efforts to revive support for global action on climate change as key to his legacy as Secretary-General.
While the Secretary-General is focusing on climate change, Syrians are being slaughtered, Iran is executing its citizens, and Saudi Arabia enslaves its women, to name but a few issues that might have taken priority on the world stage.
UN officials complain that ever since the 2009 U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen failed to secure a deal on a binding treaty on reducing carbon emissions, the UN has been "sidelined". The three-page document adopted in 2009 summit set a goal of keeping the average rise in global temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius, but allowed countries to write their own plans for cutting emissions with no legally binding targets or even a path to a formal treaty.
The Secretary-General will now host a one-day climate change summit in New York on September 23, 2014. Many developing countries are pushing for the summit to serve as a deadline for rich countries to outline planned cuts. Bloomberg's role will be to "assist the UN Secretary-General in his consultations with mayors and related key stakeholders," with the September summit specifically in mind. In other words, the Secretary-General has hired a wealthy American to lobby against anticipated Western interests - and Bloomberg obliged.