I - COP26
COP26 Climate Site
The 26th Conference of the Parties, delayed for a year by the COVID-19 pandemic, is taking place in Glasgow, Scotland from November 1 - 10, 2021. Big expectations have built up with respect to what COP26 needs to accomplish when it comes to cilmate change, but will it deliver? The current signals are not that positive.
You’ll probably be deluged with COP26 coverage in the next few weeks, which will make it all the more difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff when it comes to understanding what, if anything, is really happening.
Why is COP26 a Big Deal?
- There is a growing sense that “time is running out” to make real progress on climate change. Famous naturalist and film-maker David Attenborough recently stated, “We’ve been saying it for years, but COP-26 really is our last chance to avoid climate catastrophe.”
- A global protest movement, largely led by youth groups, is demanding more aggressive action against climate change. Climate COPs are the only venue where this movement comes together globally, and it will have been two years since the last opportunity to do so.
- The United States has rejoined the Paris Agreement, and will want to make a big show of again being part of the global climate community.
- COP-26 is the 5th COP since the Paris Agreement was signed at COP-21 in Paris. Countries are supposed to review and report on their progress towards limiting climate change to “substantially less than 2o C,” and strengthen their national commitments accordinaly. In practice progress towards the Paris Agreement goal has been quite limited, and COP-26 will have to grapple with that fact.
- As a result of the weaknesses of the Paris Agreement, a push was being made in advance of COP-26 to establish a Net Zero Club coalition of countries, regions, and even private sector companies to commit to a 2050 net zero target. The idea is that the Net Zero Club would lead the way towards a more rapid low carbon transition, and hopefully trigger political and economic tipping points that would pull the rest of the world along.
- Countries had committed to devote $100 billion to “climate finance” by 2020, and COP-26 will be where a lot of discussion of climate finance will occur. Expect many observers to argue that the target has not been met.
- Market mechanisms have been a key part of global efforts to tackle climate change, and Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change deals with those mechanisms. Past COPs have failed to achieve final agreement on the implementation of Article 6, and so it is again on the agenda at COP-26. Big questions remain about the role carbon offsets will be able to be used by countries to meet their commitments under the Paris Agreement, and by companies to meet their new “net zero” commitments.
Because we “must solve climate change,” there will be greater pressure than ever for COP-26 to be able to be portrayed as having done so. But there is a reason this is COP-26; it is not easy to make real progress on the topics that will be on the COP-26 agenda. While it’s easy to say we “must solve climate change,” we’ve been saying that for years. As a result, to really understand what COP-26 will actually mean for climate change it will be key to read carefully between the lines both in the lead-up to the Conference and the outcomes of the Conference.
COP26 in the Climate Web
This Climate Site organizes information and topics relevant to your being able to track what happens at COP-26. Through this page you can easily access collections of materials in the Climate Web, designed to help users access their actionable climate knowledge. The Climate Web is an open-access knowledgebase based on the work of thousands of experts, and the closest thing to a collective climate intelligence existing today.
We’ll be adding information to many of these spots in the Climate Web almost daily, so keep checking back. There may not be much yet in several of them.
This COP26 Climate Site takes its cue from the Climate Web’s coverage of COP21 in Paris - you may remember this cartoon!
For COP21 we organized news stories and other materials, as well as extracting key ideas and arguments relating to the success or failure of COP21, allowing users to substitute an hour in the Climate Web for days of internet research. You can access all of that through the COP21 Index Entry in the Climate Web shown here:
What you see on this page represents just one entry point into the Climate Web; there are many given the hundreds of topics covered, and the more than 20,000 hours of knowledge curation it represents. To learn how to leverage the Climate Web to your own ends check out the links at right. And if climate change is important to you personally or professionally, keep up to date on the constant improvements being made to the Climate Web by
Reactions
COP26 - the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, recently concluded in Glasgow, Scotland. A few thoughts from the Climatographers before pointing you to a range of sources you can explore on your own.
- It’s very easy to think about the “success or failure” of COP26, but as implied by the fact that this is COP26, we think it makes more sense to think about it from the standpoint of Climate Chess. In that context, did COP26 advance some of the hundreds of Team Urgency pieces on the Climate Chessboard? Yes. Did it represent a breakthrough by Team Urgency toward winning the game? Probably not.
- To illustrate the trickiness of characterizing COP outcomes, it’s important to remember that while COP21 (2015 in Paris) is generally characterized as a key success, it actually represented the failure of the first 20 COPs to be able to agree on anything really binding. From the standpoint of climate change mitigation, switching to “let’s all make voluntary commitments” wasn’t necessarily an obvious step forward.
- In thinking specifically about COP26 and its relationship to COP21, we thought the point made in 2021/11 The Cop26 message? We are trusting big business, not states, to fix the climate crisis is interesting. If COP21 represented a transition from “binding commitments” to “voluntary commitments,” does COP26 represent a transition from “societal risk management” to “business risk response?”
You can dig into a number of news stories, as well as some videos, by clicking on the links below. If you right click on a link, this page will remain open while the link opens in a new browser tab.
Selected News Stories
- 2021/11 After the failure of Cop26, there’s only one last hope for our survival
- 2021/11 Analysis: Do COP26 promises keep global warming below 2oC?
- 2021/11 At COP26, 7 countries initiate the beginning of the end of fossil fuels
- 2021/11 COP26 Gets Breakthrough Deal in Glasgow With Compromises
- 2021/11 COP Scorecard: Here’s What You Need to Know
- 2021/11 COP failure is a crime against humanity. The media must hold world leaders to account
- 2021/11 China Doubles Down on a Slower Coal Exit After COP26 Spat
- 2021/11 Behind grand declarations at COP26, a long track record of failure
- 2021/11 At COP26, investors steal the stage from diplomats
- 2021/11 Mann and Sassol: Glasgow's hope at a critical moment in the climate battle
- 2021/11 How China’s Deal With the U.S. Helped Avert COP26’s Collapse
- 2021/11 Greta Thunberg on next move in climate-change fight: ‘COP26 is over, blah, blah, blah… We will never give up’
- 2021/11 Glasgow climate summit: A glass half full
- 2021/11 COP26: What the UN climate conference failed to accomplish
- 2021/11 What the Glasgow Climate Pact means for business
- 2021/11 Vidal: It could have been worse, but our leaders failed us at Cop26. That’s the truth of it
- 2021/11 The ultimate guide to why the COP26 summit ended in failure and disappointment (despite a few bright spots)
- 2021/11 The Cop26 message? We are trusting big business, not states, to fix the climate crisis
- 2021/11 Post COP26 - it's now obvious - the mainstream has an evil agenda. - by Brad Zarnett - Climate Change Is Coming For Us
Selected Videos
- 2021 A Closer Look at COP 26 According to a Kid
- 2021 Alok Sharma fights back tears as Glasgow Climate Pact agreed 🌍 COP26 @BBC News live 🔴 BBC
- 2021 Carter_COP26 "Glasgow Pact" Global Suicide Pact
- 2021 Carter_COP26 Crime v Humanity
- 2021 COP26: David Attenborough urges leaders to turn ‘tragedy into triumph’
- 2021 COP26: Everything you need to know
- 2021 COP26 explained: Can a climate change conference save the planet?
- 2021 Zaelke_US and China pledge to work together to fight climate crisis