A crucial UN climate summit opened on Sunday amid papal appeals for prayers and activists’ demands for action, kicking off two weeks of intense diplomatic negotiations by almost 200 countries aimed at speeding up the global response to global warming.
As UN officials gavelled the climate summit to its formal opening in Glasgow, the heads of the world’s leading economies at the close of their own separate talks in Italy made a commitment to cut pollution from burning coal and other fossil fuels. But the agreement was vague and not the major push some had been hoping for to give momentum to the climate summit.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the promises made in the landmark Paris climate accord are starting to sound “frankly hollow” six years later.
Johnson struck a grim note on Sunday at the end of a Group of 20 summit in Rome. “If we don’t act now, the Paris agreement will be looked at in the future not as the moment humanity opened its eyes to the problem, but the moment we flinched and looked away,” the British leader said.
The 2015 Paris accords seek to keep the rise “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and to “pursue efforts” to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Britain had hoped for a “G20 bounce” going into the UN climate change conference. But Johnson said the group of large economies needed to go much further.
“If Glasgow fails, then the whole thing fails,” he said.
Government leaders face two choices at the climate summit, Patricia Espinosa, head of the UN climate office, declared at the summit’s opening: They can sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions and help communities and countries survive what is becoming a hotter, harsher world, Espinosa said. “Or we accept that humanity faces a bleak future on this planet.”
“It is for these reasons and more that we must make progress here in Glasgow,” Espinosa said. “We must make it a success.”
While the opening ceremony in Glasgow formally kicked off the talks, known as COP26, the more anticipated launch comes Monday, when leaders from around the world will gather to lay out their countries’ efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and deal with the mounting damage from climate change.
The leaders of three of the world’s biggest climate polluters – China, Russia and Brazil — were not expected to attend the summit, though seniors officials from those countries planned to participate. For US President Joe Biden, whose country is the world’s worst current climate polluter after China, the summit comes at a time when division within his own Democratic party is forcing him to scale back ambitious climate efforts.
At the Vatican Sunday, Pope Francis urged the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square: “Let us pray so that the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor” is heard by summit participants.
Negotiators will push nations to ratchet up their efforts to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5°C this century compared with pre-industrial times.
The climate summit remains “our last, best hope to keep 1.5 in reach,” said Alok Sharma, the British government minister chairing climate talks.