The COP26 meeting, with 39,000 registered attendees across the sprawling Scottish Event Campus along the River Clyde, was the largest climate meeting in history. What were once sleepy affairs with hundreds of bureaucrats have become carefully stage-managed international festivals. Glasgow also showed how much UN climate events have evolved in line with the urgency of the issues. “There is work to do on loss and damage … and we know and we commit to focusing on this in the coming year to find actual solutions.” “It is not perfect, it is not without fault, but it does represent real progress,” said Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands. Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Imagesīut other key topics like setting up a system to pay for damages wrought by climate change, a high priority for countries facing sea-level rise and more extreme disasters today, were still unsettled. “These decisions, I believe, set out tangible next steps and very clear milestones to get us on track to meet the goals of the Paris agreement.” COP26 president Alok Sharma (second from right) speaks with members of his team during negotiations on November 12. “This is the moment of truth for our planet and it’s the moment of truth for our children and our grandchildren,” said COP26 president Alok Sharma. India, however, weakened some of the language on ending coal power in the final hours of the meeting.
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That means the world’s three largest greenhouse-gas emitters - China, the US, and India, together accounting for nearly half of global emissions - are now aiming to stop contributing to climate change completely in the coming decades.
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At the beginning of the two-week conference, India announced a target of net-zero emissions by 2070. More than 130 countries also said they will zero out their impact on the climate in the next half-century, and most countries strengthened their pledges to cut emissions.
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Many countries and corporations have fiercely resisted ending their reliance on oil, gas, and coal - the dominant sources of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. While there is no enforcement mechanism, the agreement serves as a lever for international political pressure.įor the first time, UN climate negotiators specifically called to draw down use of fossil fuels, which scientists say is necessary to meet climate targets. The final agreement, dubbed the Glasgow Climate Pact, was endorsed by nearly 200 countries, and presents a set of principles and goals for action on climate change. “I hope you can understand why many of the activists who are here in Glasgow and millions of activists who could not be here do not see the success that is being applauded in these halls.”īut unlike so many climate meetings in recent years, the negotiations in Glasgow did not collapse or produce only a tepid statement of consensus.Īfter working through the night on Friday, past the scheduled close of 5 pm, negotiators made progress on some crucial unsolved problems, like how countries can trade emissions credits and pledging more money to deal with the staggering costs of climate change in developing countries. “I hope you can appreciate that where I live, a 2 degree world means that a billion people will be affected by extreme heat stress,” Vanessa Nakate, a climate activist from Uganda, told attendees. It was not the massive course correction for the climate that activists - some of whom staged a “die-in” outside the COP26 venue - were clamoring for. Yet they’re still not enough to meet the ambitious targets of the Paris climate agreement and stave off some of the worst consequences of global warming.
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GLASGOW, Scotland - The high-stakes COP26 climate change talks in Glasgow concluded on Saturday evening with the strongest government commitments to fighting climate change in history.