COP26 news: Greta Thunberg leads protest march at Glasgow summit

Youth activists person played a large relation successful promoting the urgency of acting connected clime change, and they showed up successful monolithic numbers astatine the COP26 summit

Environment 5 November 2021

By Michael Marshall , Graham Lawton and Adam Vaughan

Demonstrators locomotion done Glasgow, UK, during the Fridays For Future march connected 5 November

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

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It is the past time of week 1 of the COP26 planetary clime summit. The week has been fast-paced, packed with frantic announcements and a definite magnitude of chaos. Hopefully, it isn’t overly prophetic that one of the cubicle walls successful the Media Zone fell down this morning. 

Massive protests

Friday saw demonstrations connected the streets of Glasgow organised by Fridays for Future, the question inspired by teenage clime activistic Greta Thunberg and her long-running schoolhouse strike. New Scientist’s Graham Lawton was determination and reports that the march was “massive”, with astir 25,000 radical joining the protest, according to its organisers. 

A survey published this week hints astatine the beardown feelings held by galore young radical astir clime change. Conducted successful January and February by probe steadfast Ipsos and the Futerra Solutions Union, the survey asked 19,520 radical aged 16 to 74 successful 27 countries whether they thought it was imaginable to trim clime change.

Of those people, 58 per cent were astatine slightest somewhat optimistic, but 31 per cent were fatalistic (“humanity cannot trim clime change”) oregon defeatist (“humanity is capable to trim clime change, but we are not going to bash it”). These pessimistic attitudes were importantly much communal among young radical than among radical implicit 50. No wonderment so galore young radical are making impassioned speeches astatine COP26.

As we person noted, the archetypal week of COP26 has seen a flurry of announcements, many of them positive. So what are the protesters acrophobic about?

One important contented is the deficiency of enactment for adaptation: that is, assistance for radical whose lives are being affected by clime change. Developed countries person promised to springiness $100 cardinal a twelvemonth to processing countries by 2020, but they haven’t wholly travel through.

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, an planetary non-governmental organisation, hundreds of thousands of radical were forced from their homes successful October, galore of them by climate-influenced events similar floods and storms. Last year, determination were 30.7 cardinal caller displacements arsenic a effect of specified disasters. The fig of radical affected by clime disasters volition lone spell up unless much assistance is fixed to susceptible communities.

It seems just to accidental that the monolithic publicity generated by the schoolhouse strikes implicit the past fewer years has made a difference. Climate idiosyncratic Myles Allen astatine the University of Oxford has written an unfastened missive to the schoolhouse strikers, successful which helium said they “seem to person made much interaction connected the clime contented successful the past mates of years than I’ve managed successful the erstwhile 3 decades”.

Allen argues that the companies releasing the greenhouse gases should beryllium made to wage to cleanable it up. That, helium says, should beryllium the protesters’ cardinal demand.

Forcing almighty polluters to wage would beryllium astir apt the biggest governmental situation of all. Vice World News writer Sophia Smith Galer made a short video highlighting immoderate of the companies who person sponsored COP26 – which turns retired to see large emitters and immoderate that are complicit successful deforestation.

Emissions inactive rising

COP26 is besides moving excessively dilatory connected cutting greenhouse state emissions, which is the cardinal to reducing clime change. The acme has truthful acold focused much connected this decarbonisation than connected adaptation, and with immoderate success.

This is portion of a wider inclination of greenish technologies approaching tipping points wherever they go cheaper than fossil fuels. A new report from UK-based sustainability consultants Systemiq recovered that low-carbon solutions are becoming competitory successful galore sectors of the economy. It said that “the satellite could spot marketplace tipping points successful sectors representing 90% of emissions by 2030 and each emissions by 2035”. For example, Adam Vaughan reports that next twelvemonth electrical cars are expected to outsell diesel cars successful the UK each twelvemonth round, for the archetypal time.

This is each precise encouraging, but it isn’t enough. There has been a batch of treatment this week implicit whether the caller commitments made astatine COP26 person enactment the satellite connected way to bounds planetary warming to 1.5 °C. Some analyses suggested that we mightiness beryllium getting close, possibly limiting warming to 1.8 oregon 1.9 °C. However, these relied connected the optimistic presumption that each the promises made volition really beryllium kept, and successful peculiar that they volition construe into accelerated enactment implicit the adjacent decade.

This morning, the United Nations Framework Convention connected Climate Change (UNFCCC) released an updated appraisal of aboriginal emissions that fundamentally said “no, not adjacent close”. It said annual planetary emissions are connected people to emergence by 14 per cent by 2030, erstwhile they truly request to autumn by 45 per cent if we are to support to 1.5 °C this century. The UNFCCC didn’t construe this into a predicted somesthesia rise, but fixed that it antecedently forecasted a emergence of 16 per cent by 2030 and said this would pb to warming of 2.7 °C, it seems harmless to accidental that the needle hasn’t moved each that much.

The biggest root of caller emissions is gas. A study by German non-profit Climate Analytics – pithily titled “Why state is the caller coal” – finds that emissions from state roseate by 42 per cent betwixt 2010 and 2019. Remember that projected summation successful emissions by 2030? Gas volition beryllium liable for 70 per cent of it. Coal is seemingly connected the mode out, but we request to accidental goodbye to state arsenic well.

What to ticker for

We are halfway done COP26. There were breathtaking aboriginal announcements, but from present connected the negotiations volition beryllium harder. Previous COPs person overrun spectacularly arsenic the talks went down to the wire, and past consecutive done the ligament and acold retired onto the different broadside successful hunt of caller wires to propulsion through.

New Scientist‘s Michael Marshall vividly remembers, precocious connected the last Friday evening of the 2012 COP successful Doha, Qatar, seeing inferior authorities officials carrying stacks of takeaway pizza boxes into the negotiating rooms, and realising helium wasn’t going to get immoderate slumber for galore hours to come. However, COP26 President Alok Sharma has stated that helium wants to decorativeness connected schedule connected 12 November. He is readying a “stocktaking” gathering time evening and wants to person “near-final” negotiated texts by the evening of 10 November. Well, we volition see.

Quote of the day

US clime envoy John Kerry told delegates that “Mother Nature” is punishing america with floods and droughts, and that radical “are progressively outraged astatine the deficiency of capable response”. Asked what helium thought of the assorted commitments truthful far, and the assessments of what they mean for aboriginal somesthesia rises, helium was brisk. “Let maine emphasise arsenic beardown arsenic I can: occupation not done.”

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