BELEM, Brazil (AP) — World leaders warned Thursday that time is running short for urgent and decisive action to prevent the worst effects of climate change, and blasted the United States for its retreat from those efforts, as they gathered at the edge of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest for the annual United Nations climate summit.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hopes to convince world powers to mobilize enough funds to halt the ongoing destruction of climate-stabilizing tropical rainforests in danger around the world and advance the many unmet promises laid out at previous meetings.

In the midst of the ongoing government shutdown, a number of Democrat governors, mayors and other officials are flying to Brazil climate change convenings in Brazil. Founder and executive director of Power the Future Daniel Turner told: “Calling the shutdown a ‘disaster’ and then jetting to Brazil is politics at its phoniest.

The European Union is working to establish new climate goals before the U.N. climate talks in Brazil starts next week

Governments heading to the U.N. COP30 climate summit in Brazil are bracing for the possibility that the Trump administration may seek to disrupt negotiations at the event - even without any U.S. officials showing up.

The delegation Evers and Grisham were put in charge of leading is made up of more than 100 local leaders including “U.S. governors, mayors, and other top city and state officials.”

World leaders and officials began arriving Thursday at the COP30 summit in the Brazilian city of Belem. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva welcomed them as they arrived at the venue ahead of the conference’s opening ceremony.

Brazil, which is hosting the 30th U.N. Climate Change Conference this month, wants to show the world it is a leader in safeguarding the planet. Its record tells a more complicated story.