Global powers urged to go further after U.N. climate deal
U.N. climate change summit host Boris Johnson, on Sunday
hailed a last-ditch agreement to tackle global warming but said he was
disappointed it did not go further on tackling use of high-polluting coal.
Nearly 200 countries on Saturday pledged to speed up the
fight against rising temperatures, after two weeks of non-stop negotiations.
British Prime Minister Johnson called the 11th-hour deal
"truly historic" and said it signaled "the beginning of the end
for coal power".
But he said his "delight at this progress" was
"tinged with disappointment" because of a failure to secure agreement
of all countries to keep coal in the ground.India and China weakened the
language of the final text, forcing tears and an exasperated apology from
Britain's COP26 president, Alok Sharma.
He later said the Asian giants needed to explain themselves
to those countries facing an existential threat from rising seas, drought and
wildfires.
An upbeat Johnson on Sunday told a news conference that most
countries were willing to have "a high level of ambition".
But without naming India and China, he said: "That
wasn't true of everybody. Sadly that's the nature of diplomacy. We cannot force
sovereign nations to do what they do not wish to do. It's ultimately their
decision to make and they must stand by it."
Johnson said "Glasgow Pact" had managed to
"turn the dial down" to warming of "around two degrees"
Celsius -- still failing to meet a 2015 Paris Agreement pledge to limit warming
to 1.5-2.0 C.
"But for all our disagreement, the world is undeniably
heading in the right direction," he said, insisting the goal of limiting heating
to 1.5 C was "still alive".
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, though, sounded the
alarm bell.
"Climate catastrophe is still knocking on the
door," he warned.
Joeri Rogelj, director of research at the Grantham
Institute, Imperial College London, said the world was "looking in the
right direction".
But he added: "We need to start moving and global
emissions need to decline, immediately, rapidly, and extremely urgently."
The agreement in Glasgow was the first time after 25
previous conferences that the words "fossil fuels" and
"coal" -- the main culprits of global warming -- have made it into
the final text.
"This is long overdue but very welcome," said
Chris Littlecott, fossil fuel transition specialist at the think tank E3G.
Their inclusion "confirms that coal is on the conveyor
belt to the great trash compactor of history".
He said the world now has a decade "to accelerate
coal's demise and expand efforts to oil and gas too".
Recognizing coal and oil by name in the text was a painful
process, with India and China managing at the last moment to further soften the
wording to "phase down" instead of "phase out".
Beijing's shift came after it announced on Wednesday a
surprise deal with the United States, the second-largest emitter of greenhouse
gases after China.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who at the start of the summit
lashed out at his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for his absence in Glasgow, is
due to hold a video conference with him on Monday.
Beijing needs to deliver on promises made in Glasgow
"with action -- by putting an expiry date on domestic coal, said Byford
Tsang of environmental group E3G.
"How countries establish new cooperation to deliver
more short-term action over the next 12 months will be the real test of success
at Glasgow," the group said, highlighting other COP26 promises on reducing
methane emissions, deforestation and the financing of the fossil fuel industry.
If countries, particularly the major emitters, stick to
their incremental, "business-as-usual" policies, they will
"condemn current and future generations to a world of untold suffering and
harm", warned the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
The poorest countries, those least responsible for global
warming but which are bearing its brunt, fought in Glasgow to obtain specific
funding for "loss and damage".
But they reluctantly gave in, agreeing to further dialogue
so as not to jeopardize the broader fight against global warming.
"We always knew that Glasgow was not the finish
line," said US envoy John Kerry on Saturday evening.
French Environment Minister Barbara Pompili said that while COP26 was "far from having saved the planet, it put it on the right track".
Pompili told RTL radio that while the final declaration was
"not the most ambitious in the world" it represented a
"compromise" that had at one point looked elusive.
"We have a deal, we have the Glasgow Pact and I can
tell you that until last night that was not a given."
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