By PTI
GLASGOW: World leaders turned up the heat and resorted to end-of-the-world rhetoric on Monday in an attempt to bring new urgency to sputtering international climate negotiations.
The metaphors were dramatic and mixed at the start of the talks, known as COP26.
For British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, global warming was “a doomsday device” strapped to humanity.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told his colleagues that people are “digging our own graves.”
And Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, speaking for vulnerable island nations, added moral thunder, warning leaders not to “allow the path of greed and selfishness to sow the seeds of our common destruction.”
Amid the soaring rhetoric, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his country will aim to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by 2070 ” two decades after the United States and at least 10 year later than China.”
Modi said the goal of reaching “net zero” by 2070 was one of five measures India planned to undertake to meet its commitments under the Paris climate accord.
Meanwhile, a handful of more sedate, sometimes detailed, speeches were also delivered.
US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel avoided soaring rhetoric and delved into wonky policy.
“There’s no more time to sit back,” Biden said in a more measured warning that also apologized for his predecessor’s temporarily pulling the US out of the historic 2015 Paris agreement, something he said put the country behind in its efforts.
“Every day we delay, the cost of inaction increases.”
In addition to coaxing big carbon-polluting nations to promise more stringent emission cuts, French President Emmanuel Macron said European nations now have to shift from promises to action.
Earlier, Johnson, who is hosting the summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow, likened an ever-warming Earth’s position to that of fictional secret agent James Bond: strapped to a bomb that will destroy the planet and trying to defuse it.
He told leaders that the only difference now is that the “ticking doomsday device” is not fiction and “it’s one minute to midnight on that doomsday clock.”
The threat now is climate change, triggered by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, and he noted that it all started in Glasgow with James Watt’s steam engine powered by coal.
Johnson also pointed out that the more than 130 world leaders gathered for the leaders’ summit portion of the UN climate conference had an average age of over 60, while the generations most harmed by climate change aren’t yet born.
The conference aims to get governments to commit to curbing carbon emissions fast enough to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit).
Current projections based on planned emissions cuts over the next decade are for it to hit 2.7C (4.9F) by the year 2100.
Increased warming over coming decades would melt much of the planet’s ice, raise global sea levels and greatly increase the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather, scientists say.
With every tenth of a degree of warming, the dangers soar faster, they say.
The other goals for the meeting are for rich nations to give poor nations USD 100 billion a year in climate aid and to reach an agreement to spend half of the money to adapt to worsening climate impacts.
But Mottley, of Barbados, warned negotiators are falling short.
“This is immoral and it is unjust,” Mottley said.
“Are we so blinded and hardened that we can no longer appreciate the cries of humanity?” “We are already gasping for survival,” chimed in President Wavel John Charles Ramkalawan of the Seychelles, another island nation.
“Tomorrow is not an option for it will be too late.”
Guterres struck an equally gloomy note.
“We are digging our own graves,” said the UN secretary-general.
“Our planet is changing before our eyes, from the ocean depths to mountaintops, from melting glaciers to relentless extreme weather events.”
The speeches will continue through Tuesday, then the leaders will leave.
The idea is that they will do the big political give-and-take, setting out broad outlines of agreement, and then have other government officials hammer out the nagging but crucial details.
That’s what worked to make the historic 2015 Paris climate deal a success, former UN Climate Secretary Christiana Figueres told The Associated Press.
“For heads of state, it is actually a much better use of their strategic thinking,” Figueres said.
In Paris, the two signature goals, the 1.5-degree Celsius limit and net zero carbon emissions by 2050, were created by this leaders-first process, Figueres said.
In the unsuccessful 2009 Copenhagen meeting the leaders swooped in at the end.
Thousands lined up in a chilly wind in Glasgow on Monday to get through a bottleneck at the entrance to the venue.
But what will be noticeable are a handful of major absences.
Xi Jinping, president of top carbon-polluting nation China, won’t be in Glasgow.
Figueres said his absence isn’t that big a deal because he isn’t leaving the country during the pandemic and his climate envoy is a veteran negotiator.
Biden, however, has chided China and Russia for their less than ambitious efforts to curb emissions and blamed them for a disappointing statement on climate change at the end of the meeting of leaders from the Group of 20 major economies in Rome this weekend.
Perhaps more troublesome for the UN summit is the absence of several small nations from the Pacific islands that couldn’t make it because of COVID-19 restrictions and logistics.
That’s a big problem because their voices relay urgency, Figueres said.
In addition, the heads of several major emerging economies beyond China are also skipping Scotland, including those from Russia, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa.
That leaves India’s Narendra Modi the only leader present from the so-called BRICS nations, which account for more than 40 per cent of global emissions.
Kevin Conrad, a negotiator from Papua New Guinea who also chairs the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, said he’s watching the big carbon-polluting nations.
“I think it’s really important for the United States and China to show leadership as the two largest emitters. If both of them can show it can be done, I think they give hope to the rest of the world,” he said.
But before the UN climate summit, the G-20 leaders offered vague climate pledges instead of commitments of firm action, saying they would seek carbon neutrality “by or around mid-century.”
The countries also agreed to end public financing for coal-fired power generation abroad, but set no target for phasing out coal domestically, a clear nod to China and India.
The G-20 countries represent more than three-quarters of the world’s climate-damaging emissions and summit host Italy, and Britain had been hoping for more ambitious targets.
India, the world’s third-biggest emitter, has yet to follow China, the US and the European Union in setting a target for reaching “net zero” emissions.
Negotiators are hoping Modi will announce such a goal in Glasgow.
But the Biden administration has tried hard to temper expectations.
on Monday that actions taken this decade to contain climate change would be decisive in preventing future generations from suffering, declaring that “none of us can escape the worst that is yet to come if we fail to seize this moment.”
“Will we do what is necessary?” Biden asked.
“This is the decade that will determine the answer.”
The president treated the already visible crisis for the planet, flooding, volatile weather, droughts and wildfires, as a unique opportunity to reinvent the global economy.
Standing before world leaders gathered in Scotland, he sought to portray the enormous costs of limiting carbon emissions as a chance to create jobs by transitioning to renewable energy and electric automobiles.
“We can create an environment that raises the standard of living around the world,” he said.
“This is a moral imperative, but it’s also an economic imperative.”
But the magnitude of the moment is also crashing head-first into complicated global and domestic politics.
Biden administration officials have scolded China for failing to commit more to curbing carbon emissions, while the president is still trying to nail down his own climate investments with Congress.
Wading back into hands-on diplomacy with allies overseas following the withdrawal of the Trump administration, Biden on the eve of his arrival at the climate summit touted “the power of America showing up.”
He arrived in Glasgow on Monday for the summit.
The summit is often billed as essential to putting the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord into action.
But Biden and his administration face obstacles in prodding the US and other nations to act fast enough on climate, abroad as at home.
In the runup to the summit, the administration has tried hard to temper expectations that two weeks of talks involving more than 100 world leaders will produce major breakthroughs on cutting climate-damaging emissions.
Rather than a quick fix, “Glasgow is the beginning of this decade race, if you will,” Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, told reporters Sunday.
As the summit opens, the United States is still struggling to get some of the world’s biggest climate polluters, China, Russia and India, to join the US and its allies in stronger pledges to burn far less coal, gas and oil and to move to cleaner energy.
Kerry on Sunday defended the outcome of a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies that ended earlier that day in Rome.
The G-20 meeting was supposed to create momentum for more climate progress in Glasgow, and leaders at the Italy summit did agree on a series of measures, including formalising a pledge to cut off international subsidies for dirty-burning, coal-fired power plants.
Biden also lauded a separate US-European Union steel agreement as a chance to curb imports of “dirty” Chinese steel forged by coal power.
It’s another step toward potentially using Western markets as leverage to persuade China, the world’s top climate polluter, to ease up in its enthusiasm for coal power.
But G-20 leaders offered more vague pledges than commitments of firm action, saying they would seek carbon neutrality “by or around mid-century.”
Major polluters including China and Russia have made clear they had no immediate intention of following the US and its European and Asian allies to zero out all fossil fuel pollution by 2050.
Scientists say massive, fast cuts in fossil fuel pollution are essential to having any hope of keeping global warming at or below the limits set in the Paris climate accord.
The world currently is on track for a level of warming that would melt much of the planet’s ice, raise global sea levels and greatly increase the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather, experts say.
Biden told reporters Sunday night he personally found the outcome of the Rome summit “disappointing,” countering the positive assessments of his aides.
And he put the blame on two rivals of the US.
“The disappointment relates to the fact that Russia, and not only Russia but China basically didn’t show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate changes,” Biden said.
The Biden administration on Monday released its strategy for turning talk into reality in transforming the US into an entirely clean energy nation by 2050.
The long-term plan, filed in compliance with the Paris agreement, lays out a United States increasingly running on wind, solar and other clean energy, Americans zipping around in electric vehicles and on mass transit, state-of-the-art technology and wide open spaces carefully preserved to soak up carbon dioxide from the air.
The Biden administration has succeeded, over 10 months of diplomacy leading up to the Glasgow summit, in helping win significant new climate pledges from allies.
That includes persuading many foreign governments to set more ambitious targets for emissions cuts, promoting a global pledge to cut emissions of a potent climate harm, methane, and the promise from leading economies to end funding for coal energy abroad.
European leaders make clear they are happy to see Biden and the U.S. back in the climate effort after his predecessor, Donald Trump, turned his back on the Paris accord and on allies in general.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen smiled at Biden throughout the announcement on Sunday’s steel deal, calling him “dear Joe.”
Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Chinese President Xi Jinping is attending the Glasgow summit, although they are sending senior officials.
Their refusals, and India’s, to move substantially faster to cut their reliance on coal and petroleum threaten to frustrate hopes of reaching the target cuts set in the Paris climate accord.
China under Xi has firmed up commitments to cut emissions but at a slower pace than the US has encouraged.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters travelling with the president that climate change should not viewed as a rivalry between the US and China, as China, the world’s second largest economy, could act on its own.
“They are a big country with a lot of resources and a lot of capabilities, and they are perfectly well capable of living up to their responsibilities,” Sullivan said.
“Nothing about the nature of the relationship between the US and China, structurally or otherwise, impedes or stands in the way of them doing their part.”
Biden comes to the international climate summit with the fate of his own climate package still uncertain in Congress.
Objections from holdouts within Biden’s own Democratic Party have compelled him to back away from one bill that would have prodded the United States’ own move away from coal and natural gas and to cleaner energy for generating electricity.
Hundreds of billions of dollars of climate measures remain in Biden’s package before Congress, however.
“The largest investment in the history of the world” on climate, Biden told reporters Sunday.
“And it’s gonna pass.”
While an opening ceremony in Glasgow on Sunday formally kicked off the climate talks, the more anticipated launch comes Monday, when Biden and other leaders lay out their countries’ efforts to curb emissions and deal with the mounting damage from climate change.
The US president met on the sidelines with Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, with the two discussing climate change, strengthening NATO’s deterrence capabilities and human rights, the White House said.
Biden will also participate in a climate event on “action and solidarity” Monday and meet with Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
“It is one minute to midnight and we need to act now,” Johnson said as he opened day one of the two-day World Leaders’ Summit of the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow.
“We are in roughly the same position my fellow global leaders as James Bond today except that the tragedy is this is not a movie the doomsday device is real,” he said, referring to the fictional spy who often ends his films fighting to stop a force from ending the world.
Johnson warned that two degrees more to global temperatures will jeopardise food supplies, three degrees more will bring more wildfires and cyclones, while four degrees and “we say goodbye to whole cities”.
Alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi, around 120 world leaders have gathered for the summit to achieve a consensus on implementing the targets agreed during the COP summit held in Paris in 2015 and set “ambitious” targets to cut carbon emissions.
Singling out some of the biggest economies of the world in the US and China, During the high-profile segment of the World Leaders’ Summit, Prime Minister Modi will be presenting the formal position on India’s climate action agenda and lay out the best practices and achievements in the sector at the COP26 summit.
In his address, Johnson warned that unless global temperatures are brought down towards 1.5 Celsius, the world may have to say goodbye to whole cities.
“Miami and Shanghai lost beneath the waves. The longer we fail to act, the worse it gets, and the higher the price when we are eventually forced by catastrophe to act because humanity has long since run down the clock on climate change,” he warned.
During the keynote speech, Johnson made reference to a speech delivered by teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg in which she lambasted empty promises made by political leaders by saying “blah blah blah”.
Speaking at a youth summit last month in Milan, Italy, Thunberg had said: “Build back better. Blah, blah, blah. Green economy. Blah blah blah. Net zero by 2050. Blah, blah, blah.”
Johnson countered that by saying that unless world leaders act, “all those promises will be nothing but blah, blah, blah”.
“It is the children who will judge us, and their children. And we are now coming centre stage before a vast and uncountable audience of posterity and we mustn’t bluff our lines or miss our cue because if we fail, they will not forgive us,” said Johnson, as part of Britain’s presidency of the COP26 summit.
“They will know that Glasgow was the historic turning point when history failed to turn. They will judge us with bitterness and resentment that eclipses any of the climate activists of today and they will indeed be right. COP26 will not and cannot be the end of the story on climate change,” he said.
He acknowledged the “special responsibility” the western world has to take action against climate change.
“Even though for 200 years, the industrialised countries were in complete ignorance of the problem that they were creating, we now have a duty to find those funds — USD 100 billion a year that was promised in Paris by 2022, which we won’t deliver until 2023,” he said.
His keynote address was followed by an address by Prince Charles, an avid environmentalist, who called on the world’s decision-makers to find “innovative solutions” to the climate crisis.
The summit will go on to hear National Statements from world leaders on their country’s climate commitments at the summit, which will run until November 12 during which India’s delegation will continue to participate in a series of breakout sessions.
XI Jinping called on all countries to take “stronger actions” to jointly tackle the climate challenge and proposed a three-pronged plan of reaching multilateral consensus, focusing on concrete actions and accelerating the green transition to reduce carbon emissions.
Xi, who skipped the World Leaders Summit at the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, addressed the meeting with a written statement.
“I hope all parties will take stronger actions to jointly tackle the climate challenge and protect the planet, the shared home for us all,” he said in his statement which was released here.
The adverse impacts of climate change have become increasingly evident, presenting a growing urgency for global action, he said.
Xi made a three-pronged proposal to address the climate challenge, including upholding multilateral consensus, focusing on concrete actions, and accelerating the green transition.
“When it comes to global challenges such as climate change, multilateralism is the right prescription,” Xi, also General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party of China, said.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Paris Agreement provide the fundamental legal basis for international cooperation on climate.
Parties need to build on existing consensus, increase mutual trust, step up cooperation and work together to deliver a successful COP26 in Glasgow, he said.
Parties need to honour their commitments, set realistic targets and visions, and do their best according to national conditions to deliver their climate action measures, Xi said.
He stressed the responsibility of developed countries in tackling climate change, saying that they should not only do more themselves but should also provide support to help developing countries do better.
In terms of green transition, Xi said it is important to harness innovations in science and technology to transform and upgrade the energy and resources sectors as well as the industrial structure and consumption pattern.
Guided by the vision of a community of life for man and nature, China will continue to prioritise ecological conservation and pursue a green and low-carbon path to development, he said.
“We will foster a green, low-carbon and circular economic system at a faster pace, press ahead with industrial structure adjustment, and rein in the irrational development of energy-intensive and high-emission projects,” he said.
He added that China will speed up the green and low-carbon energy transition, vigorously develop renewable energy, and plan and build large wind and photovoltaic power stations, he said.
China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, has recently released an action plan for carbon dioxide peaking before 2030, as well as a document titled “Working Guidance For Carbon Dioxide Peaking And Carbon Neutrality In Full And Faithful Implementation Of The New Development Philosophy.
” Xi said the country will roll out specific implementation plans for key areas such as energy, industry, construction and transport, and for key sectors such as coal, electricity, iron and steel, and cement, as well as supporting measures in terms of science and technology, carbon sink, fiscal and taxation, and financial incentives.
“These measures will form a ‘1+N’ policy framework for delivering carbon peak and carbon neutrality, with a clearly-defined timetable, roadmap and blueprint,” he added.
Ahead of the COP26 summit, China has submitted its updated emissions reduction commitment, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), to the United Nations last Thursday, which climate activists termed as modest and said it failed to improve China’s ambition by much.
The updated document includes Xi’s pledge last September that China will reach peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve neutrality, also known as net zero, before 2060.
Compared with China’s previous NDC, submitted in 2016, there are also higher commitments to reducing emissions by 2030, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.
The previous goal to increase China’s share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption has been raised from 20 per cent to 25 per cent.
China also aims to reduce carbon intensity, measured as emissions per unit of GDP, by 65 per cent on 2005 levels, another five per cent increase on its 2016 pledge.
The country also aims to increase its forest stock volume by 6 billion cubic metres, up from its previous target of around 4.5 billion.
Installed wind and solar capacity will more than double, from last year’s 535 gigawatts to 1,200GW by 2030, according to the documents published on the website of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
