Climate activist Greta Thunberg is one of many climate activists to slam cop26 as a disappointment.
(Credit: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Anadolu Agency)
The 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) was set as the defining global moment for host Boris Johnson to usher Britain’s return on the world stage. Instead, the UK Premier was buried under a fresh barrage of corruption charges that plummeted his approval ratings to an all-time low. But the two-week Glasgow conference was about a far more pressing matter, saving earth from an existential risk, not the personal ambitions of a suspected eugenicist.
As with previous UN summits, Glasgow Climate Pact, failed to heed the stark warnings of the abyss the world is facing without drastic action. The goal in the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rises to ‘well below’ 2°C above pre-industrial levels was not sufficiently ambitious.
The implications of the world heating beyond 1.5°C are far worse than previously thought, yet nearly 200 countries assembled in Scotland reached a compromise that still falls well short despite the world heading for significantly more extreme weather and seemingly irreversible changes.
Elsewhere, The Muslim News presents a detailed analysis of the achievements and failures from different perspectives. Much is gloom reading with immense challenges remaining. Global temperatures have already risen by about 1.1°C and global emissions of CO2 continue to surge. In order to limit heating to 1.5°C, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that global greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next four years, and coal and gas-fired plants must close within the next decade. Before Glasgow, countries made on-binding commitments to put the world on course to warm up by 2.7°C –according to the UN – but this is a level of overheating would result in tens of millions of people dying as a result of drought rendering large swaths of the planet uninhabitable.
Wealthier countries have already failed to honour commitments to the developing world made 12 years ago. It has always been the geopolitical context that has prevented sufficient progress from being made, as noted by the COP26 absence of Xi Jinping, President of China – the world’s largest emitter. The warnings could not be clearer.
The only glimmer of hope is that countries have agreed to review their commitments next year and every year thereafter. In the meantime, it is inconceivable to continue to ignore the reality of what mankind has already done to the planet.