The COP26 climate summit in Glasgow yielded a mixed outcome for the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. While some major emitters like the EU and US strengthened their emissions reduction targets, overall pledges would still lead to around 2.4°C of warming. The summit maintained momentum on climate action but progress was incremental, with the 1.5°C goal remaining only just alive according to experts. Immediate action is still needed from governments to implement policies that align their commitments with restricting warming to the safer 1.5°C level.
The COP26 climate summit in Glasgow yielded a mixed outcome for the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. While some major emitters like the EU and US strengthened their emissions reduction targets, overall pledges would still lead to around 2.4°C of warming. The summit maintained momentum on climate action but progress was incremental, with the 1.5°C goal remaining only just alive according to experts. Immediate action is still needed from governments to implement policies that align their commitments with restricting warming to the safer 1.5°C level.
The COP26 climate summit in Glasgow yielded a mixed outcome for the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. While some major emitters like the EU and US strengthened their emissions reduction targets, overall pledges would still lead to around 2.4°C of warming. The summit maintained momentum on climate action but progress was incremental, with the 1.5°C goal remaining only just alive according to experts. Immediate action is still needed from governments to implement policies that align their commitments with restricting warming to the safer 1.5°C level.
What difference will it make? Despite last-minute changes,
the agreement made at COP26 still amounts to an important ratcheting up of climate ambition
IS THE 1.5°C goal still alive?
The answer is a good way to boil down the mind-boggling much they plan to curb emissions by 2030. And those plans must also be aligned with the 1.5°C 3.5°C 2015 prediction of this says Mohamed Adow at think tank Power Shift Africa. There were many other complexity of whether the goal, a more precise and tougher century’s global warming successes. A pledge to double COP26 summit, which finished requirement than the pre-COP26 the money given to help lower- in dramatic fashion last Saturday, puts humanity on the path that climate science calls for. commitment for a “progression” in successive plans. The question now is: will 2.4°C Predicted warming after income countries adapt to climate change, such as by building flood defences or planting new crops, to Six years ago in Paris, 195 countries cough up new plans? COP26, if promises are kept $40 billion by 2025. A decision to countries committed to this The UK, which is already work out a global adaptation goal temperature goal as their line in the sand for limiting future global warming, in addition to committed to a steep 68 per cent emissions cut by 2030, is unlikely to do more. Australia, Brazil and 1.5°C The warming goal of the and finance for poorer countries post-2025. Agreement on the “Paris rulebook”, a group of rules holding it “well below” 2°C. Yet the Philippines have national 2015 Paris Agreement on everything from transparency the emissions-cutting plans put elections next year, so citizens to carbon markets that have forward in 2015 left the world could elect leaders with a president Alok Sharma has said remained unresolved for six years. facing a cataclysmic 3.5°C of mandate to go further. 1.5°C remains alive, but even he But new rules, a promise to come warming by 2100. Corinne Le Quéré at the concedes its “pulse is weak”. back next year (to COP27 in Sharm That is why nations in Paris University of East Anglia, UK, says Negotiators in Glasgow also set el-Sheikh, Egypt) and woolly also agreed a “ratchet mechanism” the package of pledges in Glasgow a precedent by referring directly language on coal won’t satisfy to upgrade the plans by the end of keeps the 1.5°C goal alive, but to coal and to fossil fuel subsidies many people rightly anxious 2020. Many missed the deadline, only just. “The language is really in the final agreement. This is the about the urgency of climate so COP26 in Glasgow, UK, became important. Every word has been first time this has happened in action. Still, the outcome exceeded the de facto cut-off point. ramped up to a level above what 26 years of UN climate summits. the expectations of many veteran This first crank of the ratchet it was before,” she says. The target India’s last-minute weakening of observers who spoke to New yielded a mixed bag of plans. is alive but “hanging by a thread”, the language used, from a “phase- Scientist, including Le Quéré. Some big emitters, including the says Chris Stark at the Climate out” of coal to a “phase-down”, “There is a mismatch between European Union, Japan, the UK Change Committee, an doesn’t really matter, says Emma what perhaps the broader public and the US, significantly deepened independent body that advises Pinchbeck at trade group Energy and the young people think you how much they say they will the UK government. COP26 UK. It still sends a “really, really can achieve in a COP,” she says. “You cut emissions by the end of the powerful market signal”, especially don’t achieve everything in a COP.” decade. China and India upped The Marshall Islands’s Tina to investors, she says. “This is the Critically, COP26 has maintained their ambition, but their emissions Stege said a change on coal first time the F-word [fossil fuels] momentum on climate action will still rise this decade. Many phase-out “hurts deeply” is in a COP decision. It’s progress,” and even explicitly spelled out other sizeable polluters, including the challenge: “recognizing” Australia, Brazil and Indonesia, that restricting warming to didn’t issue improved plans. 1.5°C means a global 45 per cent The net result leaves us in a emissions cut by 2030, on 2010 better position, but one that is levels. Governments must now still nowhere near good enough: translate their pledges into an Earth about 2.4°C hotter than policies and action, an area where pre-industrial times, according even climate leaders like the UK to an authoritative analysis by have been found wanting. Climate Action Tracker, a non- Ultimately, UN climate profit scientific body in Germany, summits alone can only do so that assumes countries deliver much. The battle to keep 1.5°C ALASTAIR GRANT/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK
on their 2030 emissions targets. alive will be won at ballot boxes,
That is why the inconspicuous on the streets, in courts and in paragraph 29 of the newly forged boardrooms. Campaigner Greta Glasgow Climate Pact, gavelled Thunberg, who was disappointed in late on Saturday, is so crucial. by COP26’s outcome, tweeted: It requests countries submit “Instead of looking for hope – stronger plans next year for how start creating it.” ❚