The Economist November 20th 2021 65
InternationalAfterCOP26Out of reach?
A
s cop26 finallycame to a close on No
vember 13th, more than 24 hours be
hind schedule, the mood inside the drab
temporary buildings erected to house it on
the banks of the River Clyde was a mix of
celebration and frustration. The painful re
ality suffusing the conference was that the
world is failing to limit global warming to
1.5°C above preindustrial levels, despite
promising to do so in the Paris agreement
of 2015. Yet the summit put a series of new
procedures in place that keep alive the pos
sibility of reaching that goal, if countries
suddenly find it within themselves to em
brace drastic measures.
In an admission that the goals set in
Paris were not being met, the summit
sought to speed up the fight against cli
mate change in a number of ways. There
was an unexpected, and eventually unani
mous, call for a faster phasing down
(though not out) of the “unabated” (ie, pol
luting) use of coal and for the scrapping
of subsidies for fossil fuels. In a departure
from previous cops, a number of countries
joined assorted “coalitions of the willing”
to do their part to eliminate coal power, re
duce methane emissions, make financial
services greener, protect forests and more.
Perhaps most important of all, governments agreed to beef up their national
plans for reducing emissions over the
coming decade before meeting for next
November’s cop27 in the Egyptian resort of
Sharm elSheikh. That means translating
the promises made in Glasgow into poli
cies and seeking new ways to hasten the
transition away from fossil fuels by 2030.
One way to look at the 1.5°C challenge is
in temperature terms. The global average
in 2020 was 1.11.3°C warmer than prein
dustrial levels, and that figure is rising by
0.10.3°C each decade. The pledges made at
the time of the Paris agreement in 2015 led
climate modellers to project a “best guess”
of 2.7°C of warming by 2100. The more am
bitious ones made in Glasgow reduced that
by perhaps 0.3°C.
Another way of measuring the task
ahead is in billions of tonnes of avoided
greenhousegas emissions. Prior to Glas
gow, there was a gap of 23bn27bn tonnes
between the emissions reductions needed
by 2030 to avoid more than 1.5°C of eventu
al warming and the emissions foreseen be
tween now and 2030 in countries’ climate
pledges, known as nationally determined
contributions or ndcs. The new ndcs for
2030 presented in the runup to the sum
mit narrowed the gap by a mere 4bn
tonnes, according to Climate Action Track
er (cat), a coalition of climate modellers.
Pledges at the summit on methane, coal,
electric vehicles and forestry shaved off
roughly 2bn tonnes more. So, on top of
current commitments, further cuts of ap
proximately 17bn20bn tonnes of green
house gases must be made before 2030 to
meet the 1.5°C goal (see chart on next page).
The past year has seen many countries
promise to achieve netzero emissions by
midcentury. The next must focus on cur
tailing emissions in the coming decade.
The 17bn20bn tonnes of greenhouse gases
that need to be cut by 2030 correspond to a
45% drop from 2010 levels. Even then,
there would be only a 50% chance of limit
ing global warming to 1.5°C, says the Inter
governmental Panel on Climate Change, a
unconvened conclave of climate scien
tists. Yet current ndcs will result in a rise
in emissions, not a drop, by 2030.
The yawning gap between ambition
and reality, and the dwindling time to close
it, are what drove attention in Glasgow to
the Paris agreement’s “ratchet”: a clause
stating that every five years parties to the
agreement must lay out their plans for re
ducing emissions by the end of the subse
quent decade. Glasgow in effect added an
extra crank of the ratchetby requesting
fresh pledges for 2030 be made by Novem
ber next year, before decarbonisation
plans for 2035 are presented in 2025.
Even these extra pledges are unlikely to
be sufficient to limit global warming to
1.5°C. But the widespread view in GlasgowG LASGOW
The unclimate summit left a big hole in the world’s plans to curb climate change