What happened
The United Nations climate summit
in Glasgow ended last week with an
agreement among nearly 200 nations to
reduce planet-warming emissions and to
move away from fossil fuels—a deal that
scientists and activists warned lacked the
urgency and enforcement mechanisms
needed to avert the most disastrous
effects of global warming. Some break-
throughs were made at the two-week
conference. More than 100 countries
agreed to limit emissions of methane, a
potent greenhouse gas, and the U.S. and
China, the world’s two largest emitters
of carbon dioxide, pledged to cooperate more on battling climate
change. But negotiators failed to agree on emissions-reduction
goals to hit the target of the 2015 Paris accord: limiting warming
to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial
temperatures. The world is on pace to warm 2.4 degrees Celsius
this century. Instead, the final Glasgow agreement “requests” that
countries revisit their emissions cuts next year.Language in the final deal calling for countries to “phase out” coal
power—the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions—was
replaced with a weaker pledge to “phase down” its use, following
last- minute demands from China and India. Still, the agreement
marked the first time that fossil fuels or coal have been mentioned,
and implicitly blamed for climate change, in a U.N. deal. U.N.
Secretary-General António Guterres called the Glasgow agreement
a “compromise” and said he understood that many people would
be “disappointed” by the text. “The path of progress is not always
a straight line,” he said. “Sometimes there are ditches.”What the editorials said
What a “colossal failure,” said the Los Angeles Times. We need
“bold and swift action” to tackle our climate emergency, but this
summit produced “timid compromises, far-off pledges, and watered-
down commitments.” Sure, President Biden cleared the low bar set
by former President Donald Trump, who abandoned the 2015 Paris
climate deal. But Biden is still dragging his feet on many climate
issues, including providing aid to help poorer nations “deal with
drought, flooding, and other already occurring climate impacts.”No one should be surprised that this
summit was a “carbon-neutral plant-
based nothingburger,” said National
Review.com. The grandees who
gather for these conferences would
rather spout meaningless eco- blather
than take the practical but unpopular
actions that would actually make a
difference. That includes “convert-
ing relatively dirty coal-fired power
plants to relatively clean natural-gas
generation” and building more nu-
clear power plants, which produce
zero- carbon electricity. But that
would mean angering the environ-
mentalists who seem to dictate the world’s climate change policies.What the columnists said
America played a vital role in the progress that was made at the
summit, said Steven Mufson and Michael Birnbaum in The Wash-
ington Post. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry managed to corral
other countries into agreements to cut methane and fight defores-
tation. And the American delegation also helped convince Japan,
South Korea, China, and other nations to stop financing coal
plants abroad. After Trump yanked the country from the global
stage, it’s clear the U.S. is back at “the forefront of galvanizing
international action.”Glasgow was “a tale of two globes,” said Tina Gerhardt in The
Nation.com. The world’s 20 leading economies “are responsible
for 80 percent of global emissions,” which disproportionately
harm poorer countries that lack the resources needed to cope with
extreme weather and rising seas. But those rich countries still refuse
to commit to hard cuts in emissions, and they have yet to honor a
2009 agreement under which they were supposed to pay $100 bil-
lion a year to help developing countries adapt to climate change.Our politics do not match “the urgency of what the atmosphere
is telling us,” said John Sutter in CNN.com. Glasgow proved that
delegates will always put their own short-term national interests
ahead of the “future of humanity.” But this system of international
haggling, flawed as it is, “remains our best hope for survival. The
process is moving far, far too slowly, but it is moving.”Kerry helped secure deals on coal, methane, and deforestation.Ge
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Climate summit ends with no firm pledges
... and how they were covered^ NEWS 5
It wasn’t all bad QThe varsity football team at the California School for the
Deaf, Riverside, was once considered an easy win for oppo-
nents. Now, after seven straight losing seasons, the Cubs are
not just beating their opponents: They’re trouncing them. Last
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Knights in the second round of the playoffs, leaving them two
games away from capturing their first division champion-
ship. The Cubs confound opponents with a rapid, efficient
no- huddle offense, using
hand signals between
plays to turn what might
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communicate better than
any team I have ever
coached against,” said
Desert Christian coach
Aaron Williams.QManfred Steiner had wanted to
become a physicist since he was
a teenager in Vienna, where he
read about Albert Einstein and
Max Planck. He studied medicine
instead and eventually moved to
the United States, where he had a
successful career studying blood
and blood disorders. Decades
later, the 89-year-old Rhode Island
man achieved his goal. Steiner
successfully defended his disserta-
tion at Brown University in Provi-
dence and was awarded his Ph.D.,
despite health problems that could
have slowed his studies. “This was
the most gratifying point in my
life, to finish it,” Steiner said.QWhen Naomi Pascal was adopted
from an Ethiopian orphanage, her
adoptive parents gave her a stuffed
bear, Teddy, who traveled with her
for four years. Then in October
2020, Teddy disappeared on a trip
to Montana’s Glacier National Park.
Park ranger Tom Mazzarisi visited
the same trail days later to do some
end-of-season work, and came
across the snow-covered Teddy. A
family friend visited the park this
September and, amazingly, spotted
Teddy on the dashboard of Maz-
zarisi’s pickup, setting the stage for
Naomi to be reunited with her bear. Perfect communication