There has been progress at Cop26, but the planet’s fate is still in the balance

There has been progress at Cop26, but the planet’s fate is still in the balance:

With delegate after delegate stating there were no more deals to come, the future remains uncertain

This was never going to be a summit that would solve the planet’s woes with a single wave of a diplomatic wand. The best that was expected for this month’s Cop26 meeting in Glasgow was for an agreement to set up a tight timetable that would commit the world to gathering regularly and frequently to hammer out even tighter agreements in future. And at least that provision – yearly revisits to strengthen previous deals – looks as if it going to be approved in some form in Glasgow.

Whether such a provision is enough to head off global temperature rises of only 1.5C later this century remains to be seen. At present, most analysis indicates that we are heading for a greater rise, around 2.4C, a level of heating that could have devastating consequences for low-lying nations – including many island states in the Pacific and Caribbean. They face major sea-level rises triggered by melting ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic. At the same time, across the globe, storms could worsen, heatwaves increase in number and intensity, and floods and droughts spread – unless we follow up Cop26 with tighter and tighter deals.

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