Nations hash out deal; climate summit ends

Accord focuses on short term, misses goal set by scientists

A member of security moves to apprehend a demonstrator at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021. Almost 200 nations have accepted a contentious climate compromise aimed at keeping a key global warming target alive, but it contained a last-minute change that watered down crucial language about coal. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
A member of security moves to apprehend a demonstrator at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021. Almost 200 nations have accepted a contentious climate compromise aimed at keeping a key global warming target alive, but it contained a last-minute change that watered down crucial language about coal. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)


GLASGOW, Scotland -- Exhausted negotiators from nearly 200 nations struck a deal Saturday that's intended to propel the world toward more urgent climate action, but without offering the breakthrough that scientists say must happen if humanity is to avert disastrous planetary warming.

Two weeks of high-profile talks yielded a package that pushes countries to strengthen near-term climate targets and move away from fossil fuels faster. It insists that wealthy countries fulfill a broken promise to help vulnerable nations cope with the rising costs of climate change. And it cracks open the door to future payments that developed nations might make for damage already done.


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Saturday's agreement, however, does not achieve the goal set in the 2015 Paris accord -- to limit Earth's warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels. Instead, delegations left Glasgow with the Earth still on track to blow past that threshold, pushing toward a future of escalating weather crises and irreversible damage to the natural world.

And representatives from hard-hit nations feared that the deal would leave their people facing an existential threat.

"The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees [Celsius] is a death sentence for us," Aminath Shauna, the Maldives' minister of environment, climate change and technology, said at the summit. "What is balanced and pragmatic to other parties will not help the Maldives adapt in time. It will be too late."

Organizers acknowledged that the hard-fought agreement doesn't go nearly far enough. But they argued that the progress made, combined with new pledges to halt deforestation and cut emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, creates a road map to a safer future and "keeps 1.5 alive."

"We're all well aware that collectively, our climate ambition and action to date have fallen short on the promises made in Paris," Alok Sharma, the British minister of state and president of the Glasgow talks, told delegates Saturday.

But he insisted that the deal adopted by the nations of the world would set out "tangible next steps and very clear milestones" to push the world closer to those goals.

Yet, with global temperatures already up more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit and extreme weather wreaking havoc around the world, it remains to be seen whether the agreement will be sufficient to deal with mounting calamities inflicted by climate change.

Anything short of that will consign future generations to untold suffering, the European Union's top climate official, Frans Timmermans, told delegates in the waning hours of the summit. Timmermans -- whose delegation faced accusations of not doing enough to forge a stronger outcome in Glasgow -- said he had been pondering what life will be like in 2050 for his 1-year-old grandson.

"If we succeed, he'll be living in a world that's livable. He'll be living in an economy that's clean, with air that's clean, at peace with his environment," he said. "If we fail -- and I mean fail now in the next couple years -- he will fight with other human beings for water and food. That's the stark reality we face."

The conference ended on a sour note when delegates from China and India proposed a last-minute change to the crucial text around moving away from coal, saying they would agree only to "phase-down unabated coal," rather than "phase out."

'RESPONSIBLE USE'

Indian Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav argued against a provision on phasing out coal, saying developing countries were "entitled to the responsible use of fossil fuels."

Yadav blamed "unsustainable lifestyles and wasteful consumption patterns" in rich countries for causing global warming.

Country after country rose to object to the eleventh-hour change.

"This commitment on coal had been a bright spot in this package," said Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege. "One thing we were hoping to carry out of here and with pride. It hurts deeply to see that bright spot dimmed."

But Stege said she would accept the language change "only because there are critical elements of this package that people in my country need as lifeline for their future."

Helen Mountford, vice president of the World Resources Institute think tank, said India's demand may not matter as much as feared because the economics of cheaper, renewable fuel is making coal increasingly obsolete.

"Coal is dead. Coal is being phased out," Mountford said. "It's a shame that they watered it down."

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said governments had no choice but to accept India's coal language change: "If we hadn't done that we wouldn't have had an agreement."

But he insisted the deal was good news for the world.

"We are in fact closer than we have ever been before to avoiding climate chaos and securing cleaning air, safer water and a healthier planet," he said later at a news conference.

Many other nations and climate campaigners criticized India's demands.

"India's last-minute change to the language to phase down but not phase out coal is quite shocking," said Australian climate scientist Bill Hare, who tracks world emission pledges for the science-based Climate Action Tracker. "India has long been a blocker on climate action, but I have never seen it done so publicly."

[DOCUMENT: Read the Glasgow Climate Pact » arkansasonline.com/1114gcp/]


The final agreement at the climate summit did recognize the scientific reality that putting the brakes on climate change will require nations to speed efforts to cut emissions soon, rather than merely commit to far off "net zero" targets.

It "requests" that leaders revisit their national climate goals as soon as next year -- a not-so-subtle nudge to the world's biggest emitters to strengthen commitments that have proven lackluster and insufficient. A joint pledge issued by China and the United States during the gathering also acknowledged the need to do more in this decade.

It also lays out a plan to resolve thorny disputes around rules for global carbon markets that allow investors to buy and sell emissions reduction credits -- a complex topic that for years has tripped up delegates at climates talks.

No sooner had the final gavel fallen in Glasgow than activists began picking apart the summit's failings, calling the pact little more than a parade of empty promises. Language calling for countries to end coal burning and fossil fuel subsidies -- the first such references in any U.N. climate text -- was diluted with references to "unabated" coal and "inefficient" subsidies.

A proposed fund to pay for irreversible "loss and damage" wrought by climate change in vulnerable countries was left out of the final text, angering delegates who say such reparations are long overdue. Instead, nations agreed to start a "dialogue" about the idea.

And, ultimately, the decision does not require the drastic carbon cuts needed to meet the warming targets that scientists, activists and representatives from vulnerable nations say the world must make.

Some of the harshest condemnations were reserved for wealthy countries, which have released the bulk of greenhouse gases now in the atmosphere but have often resisted mandates to provide cash for developing nations and limit their pollution.

"Developed countries are fully responsible for climate change," Bolivian negotiator Diego Pacheco Balanza told reporters. "But they don't want to get engaged in a real discussion of finance. They are watering down and eluding their responsibilities."

Richie Merzian, a former Australian climate official, quipped this week of his coal-exporting nation, "The only thing Australia has brought to this negotiation is good coffee over at the Australian pavilion."

In a public session for ministers Friday, even Kerry acknowledged that the biggest, richest emitters "do bear the greatest responsibility." President Joe Biden also has pledged to boost U.S. climate aid to poor nations to more than $11 billion a year -- a promise that will require the blessing of a narrowly-divided Congress to fully meet.

But behind the closed doors of negotiating rooms, representatives from multiple countries said, U.S. diplomats were among those opposed to establishing "loss and damage" payments for vulnerable countries and sought to weaken language that would double the aid directed toward adaptation. Kerry sought Saturday to assure skeptical nations that the United States would make "every effort in the world" to help nations battered by climate change.

The talks in Glasgow unfolded in a world already irrevocably altered by human emissions. A landmark U.N. report published in August found that global temperatures are increasing at a rate unparalleled since the fall of the Roman Empire. The last time the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose this much this fast was 66 million years ago, when a meteor destroyed the dinosaurs.

"The alarm bells are deafening," said U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, calling the findings "a code red for humanity."

The scientific warnings seemed almost superfluous amid a year of monstrous hurricanes, raging wildfires and deadly heat waves. These crises cost nations hundreds of billions of dollars, and thousands of lives.

As talks stretched into overtime, Kenya's environment minister was among the many representatives pleading with fellow negotiators to take forceful action.

"We bleed when it rains; we cry when it doesn't," Keriako Tobiko said, referring to floods and droughts that have displaced tens of thousands of people in his country and elsewhere. "For us, 1.5 is not just a statistic. It is a matter of life and death."

Presidents and prime ministers showed up early in Glasgow and made new commitments to an estimated 40,000 attendees. The announcements included efforts to cut methane and halt deforestation, to phase out financing for coal plants and to help nations buffeted by the deadly trifecta of climate change, mounting debt and a pandemic.

PROTESTERS' CALL

Halfway through the summit, an estimated 100,000 protesters swarmed the streets of Glasgow, weathering the Scottish wind and rain to remind those inside that they were watching and expecting bolder policies.

Indigenous leaders in traditional dress, and grandmothers shouting expletives about the fossil fuel industry joined the swirling mass. Schoolchildren clutched their parents' hands and waved signs that read, "Act now."

"Cut the crap," was emblazoned on a cart pushed by 55-year-old Malcom Strong. Inside the cart: a bucket of manure.

That excrement reflected how little faith many activists had in the process unfolding inside Glasgow's cavernous convention center.

"This is what? COP26? And still we are negotiating basic things," said Beverly Longid, an indigenous activist from the Philippines.

Throughout, "keep 1.5 alive" was a rallying cry for world leaders and activists alike. The success of the climate summit would be measured, they argued, by how much closer humanity got to the collective goals it set six years ago in Paris.

"Paris promised," Sharma said repeatedly. "Glasgow must deliver."

But delivering, it turned out, did not come easily.

By the second week of the conference, the fanfare had given way to a sobering reality: Commitments made, however promising, will depend on words becoming concrete action in the months and years to come.

Despite a wave of vows to zero out emissions by the middle of the century, the U.N. analysis found, countries' plans between now and the end of the decade would shatter hopes of keeping warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists said humanity has less than a 20% chance of meeting that goal.

Missing the target would be catastrophic. Ultimately, some of the same officials who once hoped for a profound leap in Glasgow, who saw the climate talks as a defining moment, by Saturday night described it not as an ending, but as a beginning.

"Glasgow ends today. But the real work begins now," said Seve Paeniu, climate minister for the low-lying atoll nation of Tuvalu.

Saturday evening, the spectacle that had once carried so many hopes started to fade. The site alongside the River Clyde, where delegates from every corner of the planet had gathered to try to save it, went from crowded to nearly deserted. A few remaining souls trudged down the empty hallways, past a banner that read, "We can do this if we act now."

Information for this article was contributed by Brady Dennis, Sarah Kaplan Michael Birnbaum and Steven Mufson of The Washington Post; and by Seth Borenstein, Frank Jordans, Aniruddha Ghosal, Karl Ritter and Ellen Knickmeyer of The Associated Press.


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