12 November 2021 - COP26
What is COP26 and what was agreed at Glasgow climate conference?
(BBC News, 11/11/2021)
The UK is hosting the COP26 summit in Glasgow - aimed at bringing climate change under control.
A number of pledges have already been made, which could change our everyday lives.
Second Cop26 draft text: Coal phaseout remains in but some language softened
Fiona Harvey, Damian Carrington, Adam Morton (The Guardian, 12/11/2021)
ountries are being called on to accelerate the phaseout of coal power at the Cop26 summit, and to return to the negotiating table next year with improvements to their national plans on cutting greenhouse gases.
The second draft of the key outcome from the Cop26 summit, now nearing its final hours in Glasgow after a fortnight of intense talks, showed a slight softening of language in some instances but retained the core demands for a return.
The three architects of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement have told the Guardian that a return to the negotiating table next year to revise countries’ national emissions-cutting targets – known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – must be the key outcome of the talks if the world is to limit global heating to 1.5C.
‘COP26 is a failure’: Greta Thunberg says climate summit has turned into a PR event
Sam Meredith (CNBC, 05/11/2021)
Climate activist Greta Thunberg said Friday that the COP26 climate summit is a failure, lambasting the U.N.-brokered talks for turning into a public relations exercise.
“It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure. It should be obvious that we cannot solve the crisis with the same methods that got us into it in the first place,” Thunberg said.
“The COP has turned into a PR event, where leaders are giving beautiful speeches and announcing fancy commitments and targets, while behind the curtains governments of the Global North countries are still refusing to take any drastic climate action.”
Claims of COP26’s success have been unpicked – but political journalists have repeated the spin
Richard Black andPiers Forster (The Conversation, 11/11/2021)
If there is one thing that everyone needs from a UN climate summit, it is clarity. Deciphering the mass of decisions, deals, pacts, coalitions and pledges matters greatly if scientists, campaigners, policymakers and the public are to understand how the summit has advanced the goal of halting climate change and where it has fallen short.
For months now, political journalists in the UK have played up the notion that summit success is intimately tied to the personage and polemic power of Boris Johnson. Created in part by supportive newspapers, the idea has a very practical consequence: the summit cannot fail. Which has had an unfortunate impact on clarity.