“Good COP, Bad COP”
COP 21 held in 2015 in Paris was different in that it was the only one where every country coalesced around the vision of a 1.5 deg C rise. No other COP has achieved such unanimity and Glasgow was no exception; it was back to the diplomatic grind and horse-trading of lowest common denominator rather than any aspiration of highest common factor. The prime minister suggested that the mantra for COP 26 was Coal, Cash, Cars and Trees and these form a useful set of headings to mark the Glasgow Climate Pact or COP Report.
Coal appeared for the first time in a COP Report. Yes, the verb was watered down from ‘phased out’ to ‘phased down’ and it is likely that internationally China and India will pay a price for their late intervention. Importantly for the first time in 26 years of COPs, coal has been acknowledged as a primary contributor to the climate emergency and Saudi Arabia, Australia and the West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin cannot air brush out the effect of coal or fossil fuels on climate. Whether ‘phased out’ or ‘phased down’, any new mine in Cumbria now seems politically dead.
Methane, as part of the fossil fuel family, was another success with 30% reduction by 2030. Whilst methane has only small emissions, its behaviour as a greenhouse gas is up to 100 times that of CO2, depending on the time frame over which it is considered active.
Cash was one of the failures. The prime minister had tried to rally the G20 in Rome to support the $100 billion a year fund for climate adaptation, but commitments are still only 80% of this and it may be 2023 before the target is reached. Although developing countries had proposed a new loss and damages fund to deal with the impacts of extreme events, the US opposed such compensation.
Mark Carney came out with his huge private sector green industry-funding package at $130 trillion. The numbers are huge, but the concern is whether the funding package will change perceptions or whether it is just a good sound bite to hide business as normal with funding of coal and fossil fuels.
Cars were not a major success at Glasgow. Some 30 countries signed a UK led declaration on the phasing out of fossil fuel cars by 2035-2040 but the USA, China and Germany were among those who declined.
Trees were a success with a commitment to save the rain forests by 2030. Some of the signatories were surprising and the behaviour of Brazil and others will need to be carefully monitored over the remainder of this decade.
Txai Suruí, a Brazilian indigenous activist
Image: UNFCCC/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 
Inertia is probably the greatest success of Glasgow. It was recognised that Glasgow was a stepping stone on the route to address the climate crisis. In future, countries will need to report their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for carbon reduction on an annual basis. As importantly, it will also mean that their progress against their pledges can also be scrutinised annually.
The Global Warming Outcome: the hype says that 1.5o C rise is still possible, the head says that 1.5o C rise is only now possible after overshooting to a higher peak and pulling back down to 1.5o C later in the century.
Heroes included:
Sir David Attenborough with his passionate and eloquent plea to the leaders ‘ if working apart we are a force powerful enough to destabilise our planet, working together we are powerful enough to save it.’
Antonio Guterres (UN Secretary General) with his less than diplomatic, ‘Enough of brutalizing biodiversity, killing ourselves with carbon, treating nature like a toilet, burning, and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves’.
The small island states with their dignified, yet angry, stoicism.
Beyond Oil & Gas Association (BOGA) as a Danish led initiative, to phase out oil and gas production. Scotland are mindful to join, it is just whether this is before or after their decision on the Cambo field extraction licence.
Alok Sharma (COP26 President) respected by most and unafraid to show his emotion at the end. Glasgow was just the start of his Presidency that will last to COP27 in Cairo in 2022.
Surprises. The biggest surprise was not at Glasgow, but the bilateral agreement between the USA and China recognising that whatever their political differences, they recognised that Climate was a global challenge that they both faced. Hopefully, this rapprochement can be fed back into the G20 with movement on funding.
Overall Score: it was good and bad in places. The key issue was the impetus that was generated and the urgency with annual updates on NDCs targets commencing at COP27 in Cairo. COP27 will be an African COP, where the developing world perspective will be more evident.
Working Group 3