World leaders are warning that time is running short for urgent and decisive action on climate change, with several blasting the US for its retreat from those efforts.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres opened the annual climate summit, being held in Belem, Brazil with harsh words for world powers who he said "remain captive to the fossil fuel interests, rather than protecting the public interest."

Allowing global warming to exceed the key benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius, laid out in the Paris Agreement, would represent a "moral failure and deadly negligence," Guterres said, warning that "even a temporary overshoot will have dramatic consequences ... every fraction of a degree higher means more hunger, displacement and loss."

Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hopes to convi

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