6 takeaways from the U.N. climate conference.
After running a day past its scheduled end date, COP26 ended with a signed agreement, though many called it disappointing.
Before it started, the United Nations global climate summit in Glasgow known as COP26 was billed by its chief organizer as the “last, best hope” to save the planet.
Halfway through, optimistic reviews of its progress noted that heads of state and titans of industry showed up in force to start the gathering with splashy new climate promises, a sign that momentum was building in the right direction.
The pessimistic outlook? Gauzy promises mean little without concrete plans to follow through. The Swedish activist Greta Thunberg accused the conference of consisting of a lot of “blah, blah, blah.”
On Saturday, diplomats from nearly 200 countries struck a major agreement aimed at intensifying efforts to fight climate change, by calling on governments to return next year with stronger plans to curb their planet-warming emissions and urging wealthy nations to “at least double” funding by 2025 to protect the most vulnerable nations from the hazards of a hotter planet.
Here’s a look at some key takeaways from the 26th annual United Nations climate change summit.
Time for action is running out
The agreement established a clear consensus that all nations need to do much more, immediately, to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures.
When the conference opened the U.N. Secretary General, António Guterres, said the top priority must be to limit the rise in global temperatures to just 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold, scientists have warned, beyond which the risk of calamities like deadly heat waves, water shortages and ecosystem collapse grows immensely. (The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius.)
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