COP26 in Glasgow: Climate Summit Live Updates

Image

At a crucial moment to tackle climate change, the United Nations’ COP26 summit kicked off in Glasgow on Monday with speeches by world leaders who are under increasing pressure to limit the rise in global temperatures.

The opening ceremony began at noon local time (8 a.m. Eastern) with remarks by Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and others. President Biden is expected to address the gathering in the afternoon, the first of two days of speeches by leaders.

Mr. Johnson, the leader of the host nation, issued an urgent appeal for commitments to phase out the use of coal, speed the transition to electric vehicles, stop deforestation and send money to developing nations that face the gravest risks from a warming planet.

“It’s one minute to midnight on that doomsday clock, and we need to act now,” Mr. Johnson said.

Yet expectations for the annual gathering — which was canceled last year because of the pandemic — are low, owing to more than two decades of missed opportunities to sharply reduce emissions. Scientists say that nations must make an immediate, sharp pivot away from fossil fuels if they hope to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

The goal is to prevent the average global temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with levels before the Industrial Revolution. That is the threshold beyond which scientists say the dangers of global warming — such as deadly heat waves, water shortages, crop failures and ecosystem collapse — grow immensely.

On Sunday, leaders of the Group of 20 wealthy nations agreed to “pursue efforts” to keep the 1.5-degree target within reach. But it is clear that nations are falling short.

China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, proposed a new emissions target that is largely indistinguishable from one it made six years ago. The United States, the largest historic emitter, has an ambitious emissions goal but has not been able to pass legislation to achieve it. And Australia, India and Russia have not made any new pledges to draw down climate pollution this decade.

Meanwhile, only a few wealthy countries have allocated money to help poor and vulnerable nations cope with the effects of climate disasters that those countries have done little to cause.

Those two factors make the likelihood of success at the conference, known as COP26, uncertain.

COP stands for Conference of the Parties, with “parties” referring, in diplomatic parlance, to the 197 nations that agreed to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. This is the 26th time countries have gathered under the convention — hence COP26.

In 2015, after more than two decades of disputes over which nations bear the most responsibility for tackling climate change, leaders of nearly 200 countries signed the Paris climate agreement. That deal was considered groundbreaking. For the first time, rich and poor countries agreed to act, albeit at different paces, to tackle climate change.

The United States withdrew from the Paris accord under President Donald J. Trump but rejoined under Mr. Biden.

At the Glasgow conference, which runs through Nov. 12, leaders are under pressure to be more ambitious.

The Biden administration ramped up its criticism of China on Monday as the U.S. president traveled to Glasgow for the climate summit, calling on the Chinese to increase their emissions-cutting ambitions.

The critique sought to portray China and its leader, Xi Jinping — who is notably absent from COP26 — as large-economy laggards in the race to limit rising temperatures. It was also aimed at shifting criticism away from America’s domestic struggles in pushing to reduce emissions.

Briefing reporters on Air Force One, President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called the Chinese “significant outliers” among countries that have made commitments in an attempt to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Mr. Sullivan said that China had “an obligation to step up to greater ambition as we go forward.”

Asked about how the tense U.S.-China relationship was affecting climate talks globally, Mr. Sullivan heaped blame on Beijing, calling the country’s climate steps “deeply asymmetrical.”

“The United States, despite whatever difficulties we have with China, is stepping up,” Mr. Sullivan said. “We’re going to do 50 to 52 percent reduction by 2030. We’re coming forward with all of our commitments — we’re filling our end of the bargain at COP.”

China is “a big country with a lot of resources and a lot of capabilities,” he added, “and they are perfectly well capable of living up to their responsibilities.”

Diplomats from some of the world’s most vulnerable countries have avoided openly criticizing China. When asked about the new target that Beijing announced last week, which is largely indistinguishable from its 2015 target of peaking emission before 2030, many diplomats said only that all Group of 20 nations must be more ambitious.

“The world needs more,” Tina Stege, a climate ambassador for the Marshall Islands, said in a statement. “China can do more, and it should, as should all members of the G20.”

Alf Wills, a former chief negotiator for South Africa, said that developing nations were loath to publicly criticize China for several reasons. For one, Chinese diplomats can be instrumental in pushing wealthy nations to deliver funding for poor countries. For another, China now far outpaces the United States in delivering aid to the developing world.

“To a large extent China represents, from an economic perspective, pretty much an economic superpower,” Mr. Wills said, “particularly among developing countries.”

In Glasgow, President Biden will try to convince a gathering of world leaders that the United States, which has pumped more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other nation, is finally serious about addressing climate change and that others should follow its lead.

But Mr. Biden is coming with a weaker hand than he had hoped.

He has been forced to abandon the most powerful mechanism in his climate agenda: a program that would have quickly cleaned up the electricity sector by rewarding power companies that migrated away from fossil fuels and penalizing those that did not. His fallback strategy is a bill that would provide $555 billion in clean energy tax credits and incentives. It would be the largest amount ever spent by the United States to tackle global warming but would cut only about half as much pollution.

And that proposal is still pending; Mr. Biden was unable to bridge divisions between progressives and moderates in his own party to cement a deal before leaving for Glasgow. If the legislation passes, he hopes to pair it with new environmental regulations, although they have yet to be completed and could be undone by a future president.

By making climate action a central theme of his presidency, Mr. Biden won praise from diplomats and other leaders, who expressed relief after President Donald J. Trump scoffed at climate science and withdrew the United States from global efforts to address the crisis.

But they remain skeptical, having seen other American presidents promise ambitious action to confront climate change, only to fall short.

BRUSSELS — The 27 member states of the European Union, representing nearly 450 million people, come to Glasgow with a degree of smugness, having committed to a significant cut in carbon emissions.

In July, the European Union presented one of the world’s most aggressive and detailed plans to become a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. To force the issue, Brussels has committed in law to reducing its emissions of greenhouse gases 55 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.

But there are complicated and heated debates within the bloc about how to achieve such a reduction and about what qualifies as “green” enough to get subsidies. Some big, influential countries like France and Poland want nuclear energy to qualify, both to support existing infrastructure and to lessen traditional dependency on coal.

The proposals require that 38.5 percent of all energy be from renewables by 2030.

Others are eager to water down proposals to halt the sales of any new gas- and diesel-powered cars, even hybrids, in just 14 years.

But key to the plan is to increase the price of carbon emissions from nearly every sector of the economy, affecting things like the cement used in construction and the fuel used by cruise ships.

There is also a debate about whether and how high to impose carbon taxes on imports, a so-called carbon border tax, so that European companies do not face a competitive disadvantage from products produced in less environmentally stringent countries. And there are promises made about a fund, raised from new taxes on carbon, that could provide up to 70 billion euros (about $81 billion) to help governments help the people who are most affected.

While contentious, the proposals made by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, are an attempt to assert global leadership in the world’s effort to reduce emissions. European companies also hope to produce technological advances that they can sell to other countries.

Although the European Union produces only about 8 percent of current global carbon emissions, its cumulative emissions since the start of the industrial age are among the world’s highest. But as a huge market, it also sees itself as an important regulatory power for the world and hopes to set an example, invent new technologies to sell and provide global standards that can lead to a carbon-neutral economy.

David Sassoli, the president of the European Parliament, which must ratify any final deal, said in a statement about the Glasgow meeting that “we cannot afford for it to fail.”

A recent U.N. report on emissions, he continued, “makes clear that the current national plans to tackle climate change are nowhere near enough.”

“If we are serious about preventing a rise of more than 1.5 degrees,” he said, “then nice ambitions need to become clear and achievable policies.”

John Kerry, who helped clinch the Paris climate agreement in 2015 as secretary of state and who came out of retirement to become President Biden’s climate envoy, arrives on Monday with a carefully crafted message for the United Nations summit: It is critically important but not the last chance for action.

“Glasgow was never going to be, you know, the definitive one meeting,” he said in a recent interview.

That is in contrast to Mr. Kerry’s comments last month, when he described the summit as “the last best hope” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

The aim of the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. climate convention, or COP26, is to galvanize world leaders to cut planet-warming emissions enough to prevent temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees compared with preindustrial levels. At that point effects like sea level rise, devastated crop yields and the death of coral reefs become irreversible. Glasgow will be the first time since nations agreed in 2015 to curb emissions that leaders have been asked to ratchet up their targets.

Expectations for the Glasgow summit are high. A banner reading, “The world is looking to you, COP26,” greets arrivals at the airport.

“Where Paris promised, Glasgow must deliver,” Alok Sharma, the British politician who is president of the conference, declared on Sunday at the gathering’s formal opening.

But the reality is that leaders are aware that it will not. China, India, Russia, Australia and Saudi Arabia have issued either weak new plans or none at all to cut carbon emissions from fossil fuels this decade. And the United States, which has an ambitious target of cutting emissions roughly in half by 2030, is failing to pass legislation that could ensure meeting that goal.

Mr. Kerry noted that when Mr. Biden took office few countries had committed to targets that keep 1.5 degrees in reach. “We have pushed and cajoled and negotiated with countless countries,” he said, and now nations representing about 65 percent of the global economic output have ambitious targets for the coming decade.

“Glasgow was never ever going to get every country joining up,” Mr. Kerry said, adding: “It was going to galvanize the raising of ambition on a global basis, and the fact is that ambition will be more significantly increased in Glasgow than at any time.”

Mr. Kerry said he was already looking to next year to build on the pledges that countries have made and push them to do more.

“It is critical that countries lay out better plans,” Mr. Kerry said on Sunday in a call with journalists. “We fight to keep the 1.5 degree goal.”

China, the world’s biggest user of fossil fuels, has taken big steps in recent days to address the global energy shortage this fall and to fight inflation, but the moves come at considerable cost to efforts to halt climate change.

The country has begun expanding coal production by more than what Western Europe mines in a year, in a campaign that will help the country end recent electricity shortages. And Beijing separately said on Sunday that it was releasing diesel from its strategic reserves to ensure that fueling stations do not run short.

Diesel demand and diesel prices have surged in China in recent weeks. Many factories have started running diesel generators this fall because they cannot get enough electricity from the grid to meet their fast-rising power needs.

China’s extra coal production has helped bring down world coal prices in the past two weeks. Oil prices fell slightly in early trading in Asia on Monday after China’s announcement on diesel supplies, although they later rebounded. Rising fossil fuel prices have contributed to an uptick in inflation around the world this year.

But burning coal, already the world’s single biggest cause of human-driven climate change, will increase China’s emissions of climate change gases and toxic air pollution.

And as world leaders gather in Glasgow to discuss ways to halt climate change, China’s extra coal by itself would increase humanity’s output of planet-warming carbon dioxide by a full percentage point, said Jan Ivar Korsbakken, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.

“The timing is horrible,” Mr. Korsbakken said. “Let’s hope it’s just a temporary measure to mitigate the current energy crisis.”

Beijing’s leaders are determined to provide ample coal this winter to power China’s factories and heat its homes. Widespread electricity shortages, caused partly by coal shortages, nearly paralyzed many industrial cities three weeks ago.

But the potential costs go beyond global-warming emissions. Although China has made huge strides toward cleaner air over the past decade, extra coal and diesel use could threaten some of that progress. As recently as 2015, air pollution was found to contribute to 1.6 million premature deaths per year.

The next two days of the United Nations-led climate talks in Glasgow will be an opportunity to hear from nearly 100 heads of state and governments on what steps they plan to take to tackle climate change.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain will be one of the first speakers, welcoming the more than 100 guests to the World Leaders Summit. He will be followed by the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, and other dignitaries, including Prince Charles, and David Attenborough, the nature documentarian. Standard fare for conferences, there will be a cultural performance.

In the afternoon, the leaders will give brief speeches that lay out “concrete actions and credible plans” through Tuesday, according to organizers. The presidents and prime ministers will then have time to break off into one-on-one meetings.

The focus will be on what the leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations, known as the Group of 20, will say. On Sunday, they wrapped up a meeting in Rome, agreeing on language that they hoped would frame the talks in Glasgow. The speeches will be opportunities for them to outline real-world actions.

The speakers list includes President Biden, Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy and President Narendra Modi of India. Of note, President Xi Jinping of China will not appear in person.

The speeches are a preamble to the nuts-and-bolt negotiations that diplomats and climate experts will engage in during the next two weeks, in the hope of making progress on an overall plan to confront climate change.

Shortly before traveling to the summit, Mr. Biden, who is also scheduled to make a statement on Monday, said that he would “be there with bells on.”

Organizing a global summit with leaders from more than 100 nations and tens of thousands of delegates and activists — while preparing for more than 100,000 protesters to fill the streets outside the conference halls — would be a daunting challenge at any time.

This is not any time. With the coronavirus still stalking the planet, officials at this year’s COP26 climate summit, already delayed a year because of the pandemic, will be under pressure to address the dangers posed by a warming planet even as the invisible threat of the virus looms.

And just as the changing climate has already had some of the most devastating consequences on the world’s poorest nations, the failure to equitably distribute lifesaving vaccines has left the world divided between the protected and the exposed.

Vaccine inequity is also having an impact on the summit, with activists saying that the voices from some of the nations most affected by climate change are not being properly represented.

Dorothy Guerrero, of the advocacy group Global Justice Now, told reporters this weekend that the refusal to give more manufacturers access to produce the vaccines was part of the reason that some delegates from developing nations were unable to attend.

“You are already saddled by the fact that your country was affected already for many decades, and you are the least responsible for this climate change,” she said at a news conference in Glasgow. “Yet you could not come here and raise your voice in this important meeting simply because you don’t have access to the vaccine.”

Britain offered to help any delegates who need a Covid-19 vaccination obtain one, but they are not mandating that attendees be inoculated. Instead, they are requiring that delegates show proof of a negative coronavirus test every day to be admitted to the conference center.

Many countries have vowed to do more to fight climate change, but those plans fall short of what is needed to avoid a dangerous rise in global temperatures.

The world’s four biggest emitters — China, the United States, the European Union and India — are responsible for just over half of global greenhouse gas output and are considered key to limiting future effects from climate change.

These charts show emissions pathways for the world’s 10 biggest polluters, based on data from Climate Action Tracker. They illustrate how emissions are projected to change through 2030 under current climate policies, how much each country has promised to curb its emissions, and what would be needed to limit total global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, a goal that many leaders and scientists increasingly say is necessary to avoid the worst effects from heat waves, droughts, wildfires and flooding.

If countries all follow through on their current near-term pledges, the world could potentially limit warming to roughly 2.4 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2100, according to Climate Action Tracker. But many scientists say that is still too risky.

To hold global warming to a lower level of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world’s nations would all need to do much more, collectively cutting their fossil fuel emissions roughly in half this decade.

Here’s a look at some of the promises.

Greta Thunberg’s arrival in Glasgow on Saturday for the United Nations climate conference quickly unfolded into a scene of chaos as the activist was mobbed by dozens of people.

Ms. Thunberg, 18, was not scheduled to speak at the 12-day summit, which started on Sunday, but she arrived anyway by train into Glasgow. She was among the many activists who have descended on the COP26 summit to demand that world leaders take measures to slow down catastrophic climate change.

Ms. Thunberg, whose solo climate strikes in 2018 helped fuel a global youth climate movement, was quickly surrounded by a raucous crowd after stepping out of a gate at Glasgow Central Station, according to videos of the scene posted on social media.

She did not appear to speak to anyone who had surrounded her after they greeted her with a mix of cheers and yells, according to the videos. She kept her head down and followed the police officers who were escorting her through the crowd, which appeared to include photographers, young people and one heated man who admonished the people gathered.

“Have some compassion. You’re not entitled to her,” he told a photographer in one of the videos.

Another man said: “Give her some space. This is not right.”

Ms. Thunberg told the BBC in an interview last week that she had not been “officially” invited to speak at the summit. She added that she thought the summit organizers had not invited a lot of young speakers because they “might be scared that if they invite too many ‘radical’ young people then that might make them look bad,” she said, using air quotations.

It was unclear how long Ms. Thunberg planned to stay in Glasgow. She was scheduled to join a Fridays for Future climate strike in the city on Friday.

In the Glasgow train station, after leaving most of the crowd behind her, she descended an escalator and raised her fist in the air. She then gave a thumbs up to those who had gathered.

It was hard to read Ms. Thunberg under her mask, but it appears that she appreciated the reception in the train station. She said on Twitter on Saturday, “Finally in Glasgow for the #COP26! And thank you for the very warm welcome.”

When President Biden was asked in Rome on Sunday about criticism of the world’s wealthiest economies to do more to address climate change, he noted to absence of two key players: China and Russia.

“Not only Russia, but China, basically didn’t show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate change,” the president told reporters. “There’s a reason why people should be disappointed in that. I found it disappointing myself.”

One day later, as Mr. Biden joined more than 100 world leaders who have descended on Glasgow for a critical climate summit, the leaders of China and Russia were among the most notable no-shows.

Along with Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey are not attending the summit.

The presence of heads of state and government at the talks is not just symbolic. Real work gets done among leaders that cannot happen among lower-level diplomats. During the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, President Barack Obama barged in to a secret meeting being held by the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa. The discussions that came after helped clinch a deal, albeit a weak one.

So the high-profile absences this time have dismayed some experts.

“Even as most democracies are making ambitious climate commitments, the world’s most powerful autocrats in Beijing, Moscow and elsewhere are thumbing their noses, refusing to cut their emissions and even to show up at climate negotiations,” said Paul Bledsoe, who advised the Clinton White House on climate change and is now with the Progressive Policy Institute.

Mr. Putin said more than a week ago that he would not attend the summit, signaling that he had concerns about the coronavirus.

“The president unfortunately will not speak, because the option to participate by videoconference is not available in Glasgow,” said Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman.

Mr. Peskov responded to Mr. Biden’s comments by saying that Russia was “already ahead of many countries, including those of Western Europe,” in transitioning to low-carbon sources of energy.

Mr. Putin, addressing the Group of 20 summit in Rome via video on Sunday, said that 86 percent of Russian energy consumption came from nuclear, renewables and natural gas. Critics note that while natural gas emits about half the carbon dioxide of coal, it still generates pollution that is warming the planet, and its pipelines are vulnerable to leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Mr. Bolsonaro, under fire for his environmental policies, has not given a reason for his absence. He attended the G20 talks over the weekend, and he is visiting an Italian town that plans to award him honorary citizenship instead of going to the climate conference.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has pledged to make tackling climate change a priority, was also expected to travel to Glasgow after the G20 summit, but instead flew back to Istanbul, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Monday. The reason for skipping the climate talks was a protocol issue involving his delegation in Glasgow, an official told reporters. Turkey’s environment minister is expected to attend the conference in his place.

Mr. Xi is expected to issue a statement to the Glasgow summit. He has not publicly left China since the coronavirus spread from the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire and former mayor of New York City, intends to announce on Monday an effort to shut down coal in 25 countries.

The pledge comes as world leaders arrive in Glasgow for a United Nations climate change summit where persuading countries to phase out coal, the burning of which is a leading driver of climate change, will be a key issue. The ultimate goal: galvanizing leaders to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to stave off the worst consequences of global warming.

Mr. Bloomberg, whose 2020 Democratic presidential bid focused heavily on climate change and who now serves as a special envoy for climate ambition to the United Nations, has worked to shutter coal plants in the United States since 2011, and two years ago devoted $500 million to the effort. It has been linked with hastening the retirement of about 280 coal plants in the United States.

The new effort is aimed at closing a quarter of the world’s 2,445 coal plants as well as stopping efforts underway to build 519 new coal plants by 2025.

“Coal is enemy No. 1 in the battle over climate change because it causes one-third of all carbon emissions,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement. He did not say how much money he intended to devote to the plan, but he spends about $150 million annually on efforts to shut down coal in the United States and Europe, according to Bloomberg Philanthropies.

The United Nations secretary general has called to phase out coal power by 2030 in wealthy countries and by 2040 everywhere else.

The effort won’t be an easy one. At the Group of 20 summit in Rome on Sunday, leaders of the world’s wealthiest economies agreed to end financing for coal-fired power plants overseas by the end of this year, according to the final text of their communiqué.

But they stopped short of agreeing to stop using coal power in their own countries, with Australia, India, China and Russia pushing back hard against a target date.

“We are not engaged in those sort of mandates and bans,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia said in Rome. “That’s not the Australian government’s policy; it won’t be the Australian government’s policy.”

China, meanwhile, has plans to build 247 gigawatts of new coal power. That is nearly six times Germany’s entire coal power capacity.

Antonios Papaspiropoulos, a spokesman for the World Coal Association said in a statement that coal was a critical source of energy for hundreds of millions of people across the world.

“We believe it is important for those calling for any phaseout of coal use to appreciate that coal is part of the climate change solution through the phase-in of clean coal technologies,” he said.

Video

transcript

Back

transcript

Prince Charles Urges Climate Action Ahead of COP26 Summit

Addressing world leaders at the Group of 20 summit in Rome, Prince Charles called the COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow “the last-chance saloon” for averting the worst outcomes of climate change.

Ladies and gentlemen, COP26 begins in Glasgow tomorrow. Quite literally, it is the last chance saloon. We must now translate fine words into still finer actions. And as the enormity of the climate challenge dominates people’s conversations from newsrooms to living rooms, and as the future of humanity in nature herself are at stake, it is surely time to set aside our differences and grasp this unique opportunity to launch a substantial green recovery by putting the global economy on a confident, sustainable trajectory and thus save our planet.

Prince Charles addressed world leaders before the COP26 summit on climate change, saying that the conference was “the last-chance saloon” to avoid the most severe impact from climate change.

“The future of humanity and nature herself is at stake,” said Charles, who is known as the Prince of Wales and is the heir to the British throne.

“It is also impossible not to hear the despairing voices of young people who see you, ladies and gentlemen, as the stewards of the planet holding the viability of their future in your hands,” he told world leaders assembled at the Group of 20 summit in Rome on Sunday. He reminded them that they had an “overwhelming responsibility to generations yet unborn.”

He said that adequately addressing climate change would require “trillions of dollars of investment every year to create the necessary new infrastructure and meet the vital 1.5-degree climate target that will save our forests and farms, our oceans and wildlife.”

“Now,” he said, “after I suppose nearly 50 years of trying to raise awareness of the growing climate and environmental crisis, I am at last sensing a changing of attitude and a building up of positive momentum.”

The prince’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was initially scheduled to attend the climate meeting but is skipping it after being advised by her doctors to rest.