COP26 Climate Summit

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With humanity already struggling to cope with rising seas, more powerful storms, deadly heat waves and rapidly changing ecosystems needed to sustain life, the global climate summit in Glasgow opened on Monday with a series of desperate pleas for action from nations large and small. Climate change is already ravaging the world, President Biden said in a speech at the summit, known as COP26, on Monday afternoon. But even while global warming is causing widespread economic damage and upending lives, he said, this was also a moment of opportunity to reshape the way humans live in better harmony with nature. We are standing at an inflection point in world history, he said, calling climate change an existential threat to human existence as we know it. That point was echoed by Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados. If our existence is to mean anything we must act, she said. Underscoring the urgency of the moment, with leaders of more than 120 countries gathered for the summit, the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, said that the effects of a warming planet were being felt from the ocean depths to the mountaintops. Sea level rise has doubled from 30 years ago, he said. Oceans are hotter than ever, parts of the Amazon rain forest emit more carbon than they absorb, and in the last decade about four billion people were affected by events related to the changing climate. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper, Mr. Guterres said. We are digging our own graves. The aim of the summit is for countries to nudge each other to strengthen their own climate plans so that the worst effects of climate change can be averted. In order to do that, according to scientific consensus, the average global temperature rise should be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, compared with levels before the Industrial Revolution. That is the threshold beyond which scientists say the dangers of global warming such as deadly heat waves, water shortages, crop failures and ecosystem collapse grow immensely. Mr. Guterres called on countries to return to the summit every year to nudge one another until keeping to 1.5 degrees is assured, until subsidies to fossil fuels end, until there is a price on carbon and until coal is phased out. Many countries will press against such specific measures, and the absence of leaders from Russia and China from the meeting cast doubts on how united the world can be in the struggle. China, the worlds largest greenhouse gas emitter, proposed a new emissions target that is largely indistinguishable from one it made six years ago. The United States, the largest historic emitter, has an ambitious emissions goal but to achieve it. And Australia, India and Russia have not made any new pledges to draw down climate pollution this decade. Meanwhile, only a few wealthy countries have allocated money to help poor and vulnerable nations cope with the effects of climate disasters that those countries have done little to cause. Those two factors make the likelihood of success at the conference, known as COP26, uncertain. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain kicked off the summit with an urgent call for action, likening climate change to a bomb primed to explode, even as he acknowledged the challenges ahead. The tragedy is that this is not a movie and the doomsday device is real, he said. Humanity has long since run down the clock on climate change. It is one minute to midnight on that doomsday clock, and we need to act now. Ms. Mottley poked holes in the climate promises of some countries that are based on technologies that dont yet exist. This is at best reckless, she said, and at worst dangerous. and transcript The science is clear. We only have a brief window left before us to raise our ambitions and to raise to meet the task thats rapidly narrowing. This is the decisive decade in which we have an opportunity to prove ourselves. We can keep the goal of limiting global warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius within our reach if we come together. If we commit to doing our part of each of our nations with determination and with ambition, thats what COP26 is all about. Glasgow must be the kick off of a decade, a decade of ambition and innovation to preserve our shared future. Climate change is already ravaging the world. Weve heard from many speakers. Its not hypothetical. Its not a hypothetical threat, it is destroying peoples lives and livelihoods, and doing it every single day. Its costing our nations trillions of dollars. But ladies and gentlemen, within the growing catastrophe, I believe theres an incredible opportunity not just for the United States, but for all of us. Were standing at an inflection point in world history. We have the ability to invest in ourselves and build an equitable, clean energy future and in the process, create millions of good paying jobs and opportunities around the world. told world leaders on Monday that we only have a brief window before us to raise our ambitions to fight climate change, warning that climate disasters were already imposing trillions of dollars of economic costs but offering hope that a shift to lower-emission energy sources could create millions of jobs around the world. Glasgow must be the kickoff of a decade of innovation and ambition to preserve our shared world, Mr. Biden said in a speech that lasted just over 11 minutes, near the beginning of a session with fellow leaders at the U.N. summit on climate change, known as . Badly undercut by domestic politics, Mr. Biden arrived in Glasgow with a weaker hand than he had hoped for. Opposition in Congress has forced him to abandon the most powerful mechanism in his climate agenda: a program that would have quickly cleaned up the electricity sector by rewarding power companies that migrated away from fossil fuels and penalizing those that did not. His fallback strategy is a bill that would provide $555 billion in clean energy tax credits and incentives. It would be the largest amount ever spent by the United States to tackle global warming but would cut only about half as much pollution. The president touted the potential in the bill, but even that pared-down measure has uncertain prospects to make it through Congress and to Mr. Bidens desk. He hopes to pair it with although they have yet to be completed and could be undone by a future president. In a smaller session with world leaders after his address to the full conference, Mr. Biden referred to his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, withdrawing the United States from the 2015 Paris climate accord, a policy he reversed upon taking office. I guess I shouldnt apologize, but I do apologize for the fact the United States, in the last administration, pulled out of the Paris Accords and put us sort of behind the eight ball, he said. Mr. Biden did not lay out more ambitious short-term targets or pledges for , beyond those he detailed at a climate meeting in April, although he said he would release on Monday a long-term plan to bring the United States to . He also did not call out China for insufficient action on emissions reduction. Instead, he called in his speech for global cooperation. Were still falling short, he said. There is no more time to hang back or sit on the fence or argue amongst ourselves. This is a challenge of our collective lifetime. Mr. Biden said that in the days to come, his administration would detail new efforts to reduce emissions through forestry and the agriculture and oil and gas industries. And he pledged additional U.S. support for developing nations in mitigating and adapting to climate change. God bless you all, Mr. Biden said, slightly tweaking his traditional speech-closing remarks, and may God save the planet. The Biden administration ramped up its criticism of China on Monday as the U.S. president traveled to Glasgow for the climate summit, calling on the Chinese to increase their emissions-cutting ambitions. The critique sought to portray China and its leader, Xi Jinping who is notably absent from COP26 as large-economy laggards in the race to limit rising temperatures. It was also aimed at shifting criticism away from Americas domestic struggles in pushing to reduce emissions. Briefing reporters on Air Force One, President Bidens national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called the Chinese significant outliers among countries that have made commitments in an attempt to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Mr. Sullivan said that China had an obligation to step up to greater ambition as we go forward. Asked about how the tense U.S.-China relationship was affecting climate talks globally, Mr. Sullivan heaped blame on Beijing, calling the countrys climate steps deeply asymmetrical. The United States, despite whatever difficulties we have with China, is stepping up, Mr. Sullivan said. Were going to do 50 to 52 percent reduction by 2030. Were coming forward with all of our commitments were filling our end of the bargain at COP. China is a big country with a lot of resources and a lot of capabilities, he added, and they are perfectly well capable of living up to their responsibilities. Diplomats from some of the worlds most vulnerable countries have avoided openly criticizing China. When asked about the new target that Beijing announced last week, which is largely indistinguishable from its 2015 target of peaking emission before 2030, many diplomats said only that all Group of 20 nations must be more ambitious. The world needs more, Tina Stege, a climate ambassador for the Marshall Islands, said in a statement. China can do more, and it should, as should all members of the G20. Alf Wills, a former chief negotiator for South Africa, said that developing nations were loath to publicly criticize China for several reasons. For one, Chinese diplomats can be instrumental in pushing wealthy nations to deliver funding for poor countries. For another, China now far outpaces the United States in delivering aid to the developing world. To a large extent China represents, from an economic perspective, pretty much an economic superpower, Mr. Wills said, particularly among developing countries. and India announced on Monday that it would significantly expand renewable energy sources in its total energy mix and called on the rich world to pony up $1 trillion to help developing countries make the energy transition. The Indian prime minister, , also said his country would aim to be by 2070, but far more significant were the more immediate goals that he announced. In his remarks to the , Mr. Modi said would aim to build 500 gigawatts of renewable energy and ensure that half of its energy mix comes from sources other than fossil fuels by 2030. That means coal, which provides the bulk of Indias electricity, would remain a large part of its energy mix in the coming decade. India is one of the worlds largest consumers of coal. India is among the few big economies that have not submitted an updated Nationally Determined Contribution, as the Paris Agreement stipulates. Mr. Modi said nothing about when his countrys emissions would peak, let alone decline. India, an emerging economy, has almost 1.4 billion people, a huge share of them young and working-age. It accounts for almost 18 percent of the worlds population but only 6 percent of global emissions currently, and a negligible share of the cumulative greenhouse gases emitted in the past that are already warming the atmosphere. Mr. Modi said the carbon intensity of Indias economy, which refers to how much carbon dioxide emissions are produced relative to the countrys gross domestic product, would decline by 45 percent by 2030. O.P. Agarwal, the head of the India office of World Resources Institute, a research and advocacy group, said focusing on the expansion of renewable energy by 2030 was a strategic and achievable ambition. India has been under scrutiny for when it might announce a net-zero target. Mr. Modi said 2070, which is 10 years later than Chinas promise and 20 years later than promises made by the United States and Europe. India has been vocal in pressing for money from industrialized countries to help developing economies make the energy transition, and Mr. Modi upped the ante on Monday. India expects developed countries to make $1 trillion in climate finance available as soon as possible, he said. A promised $100 billion in climate aid has not yet been delivered. According to a by Carbon Brief, India is by far the largest recipient of climate finance. transcript [music playing] Singing: Ask me what is my purpose. Ask me what my name is. What is it that Im taking to the ones who will decide? The sky was a steely gray on Monday. A cold wind blew off the River Clyde. A variety of world leaders were greeted by a variety of protesters outside the gates. And the line to get into the COP26 summit in Glasgow was long. Very long. Only ministers and heads of countries got to jump the line, which stretched outside the conference center for an hour or so this morning, as everyone entering had to not only display their COP identification badges, if they had picked theirs up, but also proof of a negative Covid test, a requirement for entry every day. The meeting, after all, is being held amid a global pandemic. It was an orderly throng. Most people were masked. An Indonesian man pushed a wheelbarrow containing a traditional yellow rice. It was for his pavilion inside the conference center, he said. A man from Ghana told the woman waiting next to him he had missed one meeting already and was about to miss another. Helicopters growled overhead. The COP26 banner that hung above the building came undone, thanks to the blustery wind. The city is transformed, and yet still the same. Several major streets are closed, forcing taxis into U-turns. Yet golden autumn leaves carpet the streets as they always do this time of year. In a city park, preschoolers clamber over a climbing gym, their mini-backpacks lined up neatly on a bench. They seem oblivious to what government and corporate leaders meeting a short distance away are willing to do or not do, as is mostly the case to safeguard their futures. Outside the conference, pockets of protesters gathered around Glasgow, with thousands more expected to rally later in the week. Greta Thunberg joined a group of young climate activists on the fringes of the conference on Monday, wearing a navy face mask and holding a banner that read Enough is Enough. Alongside her were other Fridays for Future activists from around the world calling for greater urgency to combat the climate crisis. Inside COP, there are just politicians and people in power pretending to take our future seriously, Ms. Thunberg told the small crowd that gathered, pretending to take the present seriously of the people who are being affected already, today, by the climate crisis. Change is not going to come from inside there, she added. That is not leadership, this is leadership. Greenpeace activists were also making their way toward the city aboard the vessel the Rainbow Warrior, sailing up the Clyde to the city center with a group of young climate activists from Namibia, Uganda, Mexico and Bangladesh. The activists, from communities around the world that have felt the impact of climate change, say there is not enough representation of those most impacted by the crisis at the conference. Like many of the young people protesting this week, they want to see more ambitious measures taken by the leaders gathered for COP26. and transcript Its time to say enough enough of brutalizing biodiversity. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon. Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves. Our planet is changing before our eyes, from the ocean depths to mountaintops, from melting glaciers to relentless extreme weather events. Sea-level rise is double the rate it was 30 years ago. Oceans are hotter than ever, and getting warmer faster. Parts of the Amazon rainforest now emit more carbon than they absorb. Recent climate action announcements might give the impression that we are on track to turn things around. This is an illusion. Even in the best-case scenario, temperatures will rise well above 2 degrees. So as we open this much-anticipated climate conference, we are still heading for climate disaster. Young people know it. Every country sees its, small island, developing states and other vulnerable ones live it. And for them, failure is not an option. Failure is a death sentence. The United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, on Monday issued a blistering critique of the worlds failure to rein in global warming, calling on countries to return every year to review their climate targets not every five years, as the Paris climate agreement spells out. Even if the recent pledges were clear and credible and there are serious questions about some of them we are still careening towards climate catastrophe, he said at the opening ceremony of , the . Our planet is talking to us, Mr. Guterres said. We must listen, and we must act. He was referring to analyses that have found that even if all countries meet their national targets to , the global average temperature is projected to rise 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of this century compared with preindustrial times. That would put the world on a path to more intense , fires and flooding. Scientists have concluded that the best way to avert the worst consequences of climate change is to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Mr. Guterres call for yearly reviews is being pushed by a group of countries that are most vulnerable to climate change, but it is expected to face major pushback from many countries that will argue that it moves the goal posts of the 2015 Paris agreement. Mr. Guterres said these annual reviews should be conducted until the world as a whole can meet the 1.5-degree target. And he also raised the bar with specific demands, including an end to subsidies for fossil fuels, a price on carbon dioxide emissions and a phasing out of coal. There is no agreement among the worlds major polluters on any of that. Even as recently as Sunday, leaders of the Group of 20 wealthy nations which produce 80 percent of the worlds emissions, led by the United States, China and European Union countries with an agreement only to end overseas funding for coal. It was the kind of spotlight associated with a certain other young climate activist: A hall full of world leaders and a speaking slot preceding the secretary general of the United Nations. The woman in the spotlight was not Greta Thunberg, but Txai Surui, a 24-year-old Indigenous climate activist from Brazil, making her first appearance on the world stage. On the opening day of the global climate summit in Glasgow, she made an eloquent appeal drawing attention to the devastating deforestation of the Amazon. The Earth is speaking, Ms. Surui said. She tells us that we have no more time. The animals are disappearing, she added. The rivers are dying, and our plants dont flower like they did before. Ms. Surui told the heads of state in the audience that they were closing your eyes to reality and their timetables for reducing carbon emissions and scaling back the use of fossil fuels were inadequate. Its not 2030 or 2050, she said. Its now. Ms. Suruis speech at the summit came as organizers faced criticism for a notable omission from the program: Ms. Thunberg, who said that she had not been invited, but . Recalling to world leaders the murder of one of her childhood friends, who she said had tried to combat deforestation, Ms. Surui said that she had witnessed the toll of climate change firsthand. Indigenous peoples are on the front line of the climate emergency, she said. We must be at the center of the decisions happening here. Ms. Surui said that her father, a tribal chief, had taught her we must listen to the stars, the moon, the wind, the animals and the trees. The 27 member states of the European Union, representing nearly 450 million people, come to Glasgow with a degree of smugness, having committed to a significant cut in carbon emissions. In July, the European Union presented to become a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. To force the issue, Brussels has committed in law to reducing its emissions of greenhouse gases 55 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels. But there are complicated and heated debates within the bloc about how to achieve such a reduction and about what qualifies as green enough to get subsidies. Some big, influential countries like France and Poland want nuclear energy to qualify, both to support existing infrastructure and to lessen traditional dependency on coal. The proposals require that 38.5 percent of all energy be from renewables by 2030. Others are eager to water down proposals to halt the sales of any new gas- and diesel-powered cars, even hybrids, in just 14 years. But key to the plan is to increase the price of carbon emissions from nearly every sector of the economy, affecting things like the cement used in construction and the fuel used by cruise ships. There is also a debate about whether and how high to impose carbon taxes on imports, a so-called carbon border tax, so that European companies do not face a competitive disadvantage from products produced in less environmentally stringent countries. And there are promises made about a fund, raised from new taxes on carbon, that could provide up to 70 billion euros (about $81 billion) to help governments help the people who are most affected. While contentious, the proposals made by the European Commission, the blocs executive arm, are an attempt to assert global leadership in the worlds effort to reduce emissions. European companies also hope to produce technological advances that they can sell to other countries. Although the European Union produces only about 8 percent of current global carbon emissions, its cumulative emissions since the start of the industrial age are among the worlds highest. But as a huge market, it also sees itself as an important regulatory power for the world and hopes to set an example, invent new technologies to sell and provide global standards that can lead to a carbon-neutral economy. David Sassoli, the president of the European Parliament, which must ratify any final deal, said in a statement about the Glasgow meeting that we cannot afford for it to fail. A recent U.N. report on emissions, he continued, makes clear that the current national plans to tackle climate change are nowhere near enough. If we are serious about preventing a rise of more than 1.5 degrees, he said, then nice ambitions need to become clear and achievable policies. Every corner of the world will feel the effects of global warming, but they will be most drastic for small island nations particularly low-lying ones that could be swallowed whole by rising seas. Yet the fate of those countries rests not in their own hands, but in those of much larger nations that emit the vast majority of greenhouse gases, and whose economies benefit from producing or burning fossil fuels. Leaders of island nations made impassioned appeals at the U.N. climate summit, arguing not only that the rest of the world should act in its own self-interest, but that it has an obligation specifically to them. The existence of our low-lying neighbors is not negotiable, said Frank Bainimarama, the prime minister of Fiji. The world faces a choice between our grandchildrens future and corporate greed, he said, insisting that the international target of keeping average temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius is feasible. All thats missing is courage to act, he said. Several leaders called for the conference to discuss the idea of wealthier, more polluting nations paying damages to poorer ones that contribute little to the problem but suffer disproportionately from it. Among them was Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, one of the small island countries that this week turned to an international court seeking such damages. Island leaders also scolded others for discussing global warming, and their responses to it, in deceptive terms. The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, poked holes in the climate promises of some countries that are based on technologies that dont yet exist. This is at best reckless, she said, and at worst dangerous. From the perspective of low-lying countries, she said, if our existence is to mean anything we must act. Mr. Bainimarama took a swipe at phrases that are tossed around by companies and countries that profit from fossil fuels. Clean coal, responsible natural gas, he said, are all figments. and transcript None of us underestimates the challenges ahead. But history has shown that when nations come together in common cause, there is always room for hope. Working side by side, we have the ability to solve the most insurmountable problems and to triumph over the greatest of adversities. It has sometimes been observed that what leaders do for their people today is government and politics. But what they do for the people of tomorrow, that is statesmanship. I, for one, hope that this conference will be one of those rare occasions where everyone will have the chance to rise above the politics of the moment and achieve true statesmanship. I know you all carry a heavy burden on your shoulders, and you do not need me to tell you that the eyes and hopes of the world are upon you to act with all dispatch and decisively because time has quite literally run out. My plea today is for countries to come together to create the environment that enables every sector of industry to take the action required. , absent from the climate summit because of health concerns but not silent, urged world leaders on Monday to rise above their current political differences and show true statesmanship for the sake of the planet. In a to the , the 95-year-old monarch said that nations had overcome insurmountable problems and adversity throughout history by cooperating. It has sometimes been observed that what leaders do for their people today is government and politics, she said. But what they do for the people of tomorrow that is statesmanship. The queen, wearing green and a butterfly brooch, had because of what Buckingham Palace described as fatigue. She said that the environment had been a subject close to the heart of her late husband, , the Duke of Edinburgh, who . Calling for world leaders to find common ground, she said that the time for words has now moved to the time for action. Of course, the benefits of such actions will not be there to enjoy for all of us here today, she said. None of us will live forever. But we are doing this not for ourselves, but for our children and our childrens children, and those who will follow in their footsteps. The queen said that the environmental work of her late husband lived on through her eldest grandson, Prince William, and eldest son, Prince Charles, who, addressing world leaders on Monday at the summit, called for to combat climate change. Charless remarks built on comments on Sunday at the Group of 20 summit in Rome, where he described the conference as the last-chance saloon to avoid the most severe effects from climate change. The future of humanity and nature herself is at stake, said Charles, the Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne. It is also impossible not to hear the despairing voices of young people who see you, ladies and gentlemen, as the stewards of the planet holding the viability of their future in your hands, he told world leaders assembled in Rome. He reminded them that they had an overwhelming responsibility to generations yet unborn. He said that adequately addressing climate change would require trillions of dollars of investment every year to create the necessary new infrastructure and meet the vital 1.5 degree climate target that will save our forests and farms, our oceans and wildlife. and transcript As you spend the next two weeks debating, negotiating, persuading and compromising, as you surely must, its easy to forget that ultimately, the emergency climate comes down to a single number: the concentration of carbon in our atmosphere. Perhaps the fact that the people most affected by climate change are no longer some imagined future generations, but young people alive today, perhaps that will give us the impetus we need to rewrite our story, to turn this tragedy into a triumph. The people alive now are the generation to come, will look at this conference and consider one thing: Did that number stop rising and start to drop as a result of commitments made here? Theres every reason to believe that the answer can be yes. If working apart, we are force powerful enough to destabilize our planet, surely working together, we are powerful enough to save it. In my lifetime, Ive witnessed a tenable decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery. That desperate hope, ladies and gentlemen, delegates, excellency, is why the world is looking to you and why you are here. David Attenborough, one of Britains most trusted public figures and among the worlds most recognizable voices for Earths natural beauty, implored leaders to use the as a climate turning point, creating a more equitable world in the process. The naturalist, whose narrative gravitas has focused attention on the planets health for decades, was among the earliest speakers at the on Monday alongside world leaders and climate activists. If working apart we are force powerful enough to destabilize our planet, surely working together we are powerful enough to save it, said Mr. Attenborough, 95. In his nature documentaries, Mr. Attenborough has guided viewers to the most beautiful corners of the planet, with his gentle but authoritative voice a comforting presence. But his work has never shied from politically thorny environmental issues, and he about the high stakes of climate change and the action necessary to address it. On Monday, he focused his remarks on the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere, a measure that he said defines our relationship with our world. In the last 10,000 years, as the number stabilized, he said, civilization was made possible and humans took advantage. But he warned that this stability was now under threat. Perhaps the fact that the people most affected by climate change are no longer some imagined future generation but young people alive today perhaps that will give us the impetus we need to rewrite our story, he said. transcript Inside COP, there are just politicians and people in power pretending to take our future seriously, to pretending to take the present seriously of the people who are being affected already today by the climate crisis. Change is not going to come from inside there. That is not leadership. This is leadership. This is what leadership looks like. [cheering] We say no more blah, blah, blah. No more exploitation of people and nature and the planet. What do we want? Crowd: Climate justice! When do we want it? Crowd: Now! What do we want? Crowd: Climate justice! When do we want it? Crowd: Now! No more blah, blah, blah. No more blah, blah, blah. As joined scores of on the streets outside the United Nations climate conference in on Monday, an online petition that she helped start quickly drew more than a million signatures. The open letter from Ms. Thunberg and other young climate activists including , Dominika Lasota and Mitzi Tan accused political leaders of betrayal for not meeting their own goals to address global warming. Right now, world leaders are meeting for historic climate talks, but pledges without real action wont cut it anymore, Ms. Thunberg said. We are catastrophically far from the crucial goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius, and yet governments everywhere are still accelerating the crisis, spending billions on fossil fuels. The impact of the youth campaign led by Ms. Thunberg was evident in the halls of the conference, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain borrowed from her scathing indictment of the political leaders. All the promises will be nothing but blah, blah, blah, to coin a phrase, unless we get real, Mr. Johnson said. Ms. Thunberg, 18, is not scheduled to speak at the 12-day summit, which started on Sunday. The activist, whose solo climate strikes in 2018 helped fuel a global youth climate movement, was quickly surrounded by a raucous crowd after stepping out of a gate at Glasgow Central Station, according to of the posted on social media. She did not appear to speak to those who surrounded her, according to the videos. She kept her head down and followed the police officers who were escorting her through the crowd, which appeared to include photographers, young people and one heated man who admonished those gathered. Have some compassion. Youre not entitled to her, he told a photographer in one of the . Another man said: Give her some space. This is not right. Ms. Thunberg in an interview last week that she had not been officially invited to speak at the summit. She added that she thought the summit organizers had not invited a lot of young speakers because they might be scared that if they invite too many radical young people then that might make them look bad, she said, using air quotations. and , who helped clinch the as secretary of state and who came out of retirement to become President Bidens climate envoy, arrives on Monday with a carefully crafted message for the : It is critically important but not the last chance for action. Glasgow was never going to be, you know, the definitive one meeting, he said in a recent interview. That is in contrast to Mr. s comments last month, when he described the summit as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert the worst consequences of climate change. The aim of the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. climate convention, or , is to galvanize world leaders to cut planet-warming emissions enough to prevent temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees compared with preindustrial levels. At that point effects like sea level rise, devastated crop yields and the death of coral reefs become irreversible. Glasgow will be the first time since nations agreed in 2015 to curb emissions that leaders have been asked to ratchet up their targets. Expectations for the are high. A banner reading, The world is looking to you, COP26, greets arrivals at the airport. Where Paris promised, Glasgow must deliver, , the British politician who is president of the conference, declared on Sunday at the gatherings formal opening. But the reality is that leaders are aware that it will not. China, India, Russia, Australia and Saudi Arabia have issued either weak new plans or none at all to cut carbon emissions from fossil fuels this decade. And the United States, which has of cutting emissions roughly in half by 2030, is failing to pass legislation that could ensure meeting that goal. Mr. noted that when Mr. Biden took office few countries had committed to targets that keep 1.5 degrees in reach. We have pushed and cajoled and negotiated with countless countries, he said, and now nations representing about 65 percent of the global economic output have ambitious targets for the coming decade. Glasgow was never ever going to get every country joining up, Mr. Kerry said, adding: It was going to galvanize the raising of ambition on a global basis, and the fact is that ambition will be more significantly increased in Glasgow than at any time. Mr. Kerry said he was already looking to next year to build on the pledges that countries have made and push them to do more. It is critical that countries lay out better plans, Mr. Kerry said on Sunday in a call with journalists. We fight to keep the 1.5 degree goal. Organizing a global summit with leaders from more than 100 nations and tens of thousands of delegates and activists while preparing for more than 100,000 protesters to fill the streets outside the conference halls would be a daunting challenge at any time. This is not any time. With the coronavirus still stalking the planet, officials at this years , already delayed a year because of the pandemic, are under pressure to address the dangers posed by a warming planet even as the invisible threat of the virus looms. As the summit kicked off, the official . And just as the changing climate has already had some of the most devastating consequences on the worlds poorest nations, the failure to equitably distribute lifesaving vaccines has left the world divided between the protected and the exposed. Vaccine inequity is also having an impact on the summit, with activists saying that the voices from some of the nations most affected by climate change are not being properly represented. Dorothy Guerrero, of the advocacy group , told reporters over the weekend that the refusal to give more manufacturers access to produce the vaccines was part of the reason that some delegates from developing nations were unable to attend. You are already saddled by the fact that your country was affected already for many decades, and you are the least responsible for this climate change, she said at a news conference in Glasgow. Yet you could not come here and raise your voice in this important meeting simply because you dont have access to the vaccine. Britain obtain one, but attendees are not required to be inoculated. Instead, delegates must show proof of a negative coronavirus test every day to be admitted to the conference center. and Many countries have vowed to do more to fight climate change, but those plans fall short of what is needed to avoid a dangerous rise in global temperatures. The worlds four biggest emitters China, the United States, the European Union and India are responsible for just over half of global greenhouse gas output and are considered key to limiting future effects from climate change. These charts show emissions pathways for the worlds 10 biggest polluters, based on data from . They illustrate how emissions are projected to change through 2030 under current climate policies, how much each country has promised to curb its emissions, and what would be needed to limit total global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, a goal that many leaders and scientists increasingly say is necessary to avoid the worst effects from heat waves, droughts, wildfires and flooding. If countries all follow through on their current near-term pledges, the world could potentially limit warming to roughly 2.4 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2100, according to Climate Action Tracker. But many scientists say that is still too risky. To hold global warming to a lower level of 1.5 degrees Celsius, the worlds nations would all need to do much more, collectively cutting their fossil fuel emissions . at some of the promises. and The newest plans by countries to fight climate change still fall short of what scientists say is necessary. Heres what the 10 biggest emitters have promised. When President Biden was asked in Rome on Sunday about criticism of the worlds wealthiest economies to do more to address climate change, he noted to absence of two key players: China and . Not only Russia, but China, basically didnt show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate change, the president told reporters. Theres a reason why people should be disappointed in that. I found it disappointing myself. One day later, as Mr. Biden joined more than 100 world leaders who have descended on Glasgow for a critical including Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain the leaders of China and Russia were among the most notable no-shows. Along with of China and of Russia, of Brazil and of Turkey are not attending the summit. The presence of heads of state and government at the talks is not just symbolic. Real work gets done among leaders that cannot happen among lower-level diplomats. During the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, President barged in to a secret meeting being held by the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa. The discussions that came after , albeit a weak one. So the high-profile absences this time have dismayed some experts. Even as most democracies are making ambitious climate commitments, the worlds most powerful autocrats in Beijing, Moscow and elsewhere are thumbing their noses, refusing to cut their emissions and even to show up at climate negotiations, said Paul Bledsoe, who advised the Clinton White House on climate change and is now with the Progressive Policy Institute. Mr. Putin said more than a week ago that , signaling that he had concerns about the coronavirus. The president unfortunately will not speak, because the option to participate by videoconference is not available in Glasgow, said Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman. Mr. Peskov responded to Mr. Bidens comments by saying that Russia was already ahead of many countries, including those of Western Europe, in transitioning to low-carbon sources of energy. Mr. Putin, addressing the Group of 20 summit in Rome via video on Sunday, said that 86 percent of Russian energy consumption came from nuclear, renewables and natural gas. Critics note that while natural gas emits about half the carbon dioxide of coal, it still generates pollution that is warming the planet, and its pipelines are vulnerable to leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Mr. Bolsonaro, under fire for his environmental policies, has not given a reason for his absence. He attended , and he is visiting an Italian town that plans to award him honorary citizenship instead of going to the climate conference. Turkeys president, , who has pledged to make tackling climate change a priority, was also expected to travel to Glasgow after the G20 summit, but instead flew back to Istanbul, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Monday. The reason for skipping the climate talks was a protocol issue involving his delegation in Glasgow, an official told reporters. Turkeys environment minister is expected to attend the conference in his place. Mr. Xi is expected to issue a statement to the . He has not publicly left China since the coronavirus spread from the Chinese city of Wuhan. and Frustrated over being ignored in the climate change fight, small island nations most affected by rising sea levels and hurricanes are turning to an international court in the hope of winning compensation to cover losses and better protect themselves. On Sunday, as the COP26 summit began, the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda and the Pacific nation of Tuvalu set in motion a procedure before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to claim damages from major polluting countries. Litigation is the only way we will be taken seriously while the leaders of big countries are dillydallying, said Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, who is the chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States. We want to force them to respond in a court of law. While small island states did not create the problems of climate change, Mr. Browne added, we are on the frontline of this fight because we are on the frontline of bearing the catastrophic consequences. The current climate accords do not include provisions for dispute settlement. But the tribunal based in Hamburg, Germany, has a mandate to settle disputes linked to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which obliges nations to protect the marine environment. A large majority of nations have ratified the convention, although the United States is among those that have not. The tribunal has ruled on seabed mining, marine boundaries and fisheries, but it has never heard a case involving greenhouse gases and their effects on the oceans. As a first step, the islands will ask the tribunal judges whether it is possible to claim damages from countries emitting greenhouse gases that warm and change the oceans. The islands hope that the judges will rule on whether excessive greenhouse gases are pollutants covered under the convention, a decision that could be groundbreaking because it could pave the way for lawsuits before the tribunal or other international courts. Payam Akhavan, a lawyer representing both Antigua and Barbuda and Tuvalu, said such a ruling could be a game-changer. The principle is that the polluter pays. The countries have joined forces because two signatories are required to start the process, but they expect other islands to join the legal effort. Island states worldwide face varying challenges from the warming climate. Low-lying atolls, mainly in the Pacific, have seen rising seas erode territory and damage crops and drinking water. Volcanic islands in the Caribbean have suffered infrastructure damage because of a growing number of hurricanes. Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, speaking before the global climate gathering on Monday, said that wealthy nations failure to act amounted to a death sentence for island nations like hers and much of the developing world. Are we so blinded and hardened that we can no longer appreciate the cries of humanity? she asked. Governments are committing to net zero. Eco-friendly products are being sold on Instagram. Oil and gas companies are promising to become sustainable. As climate change gets worse, many people want others to know that theyre doing something about it. But what do those words mean? Are they really communicating information or obfuscating it? Consider the debates over natural gas versus fracked gas, carbon pricing rather than carbon tax, or renewable versus clean energy. Here is a brief users guide the term net zero. Scientists have warned that global warming until humanity reaches net zero emissions globally that is, the point at which we are no longer pumping any additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. So in recent years a growing number of countries and businesses have been pledging to go net zero by various dates. But the concept can easily be abused. Governments or companies are not always promising to stop emitting carbon dioxide altogether. Often theyre saying that they will reduce fossil-fuel emissions from their own factories, homes and cars as much as they can and then offset whatever they cant get rid of by, for example, planting trees or using technology to pull carbon out of the air. Those offsets can be contentious, though. Trees can absorb carbon, but they can also burn in wildfires. Carbon removal technology is still in its infancy. Critics worry that leaders and businesses may be using the uncertain promise of such offsets to avoid making deeper cuts today. And many countries net zero pledges are vague and not backed by concrete policies to curb emissions. Wealthy nations to pursue efforts to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to preindustrial times. But meeting that goal means that all countries must commit to cutting emissions faster and deeper than they are already doing. , scientists say, the world will experience more intense heat waves and drought, and more deadly floods and wildfires. Humans have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century. Countries have to reduce emissions enough to keep the planet below 1.5 degrees of warming. So if leaders dont commit to bold steps now, when so much global attention is focused on the Glasgow climate talks, many fear that the world will barrel toward dangerous levels of warming. Read the article below to see how far the world has, and hasnt, come. Nations have started making progress on climate change. But were still on track for dangerous warming unless those efforts accelerate drastically. Australia, a major producer of fossil fuels that has long been criticized for dragging its feet on climate change, has done little this week to change that perception. At the , Prime Minister Scott Morrison did not join an international effort to 30 percent by 2030, a commitment shared by more than 100 nations including the United States. Australia also declined for reducing emissions or announce firm plans to transition away from its deep investment in fossil fuel production. Mr. Morrison did sign on to an agreement to , offered $500 million in new funding to help neighboring countries deal with the effects of climate change and last week committed to getting his country to by 2050. But critics argued that his government was not acting with enough urgency, or that it was making vague commitments. Addressing the conference on Monday, Mr. Morrison said that Australias emissions would fall 35 percent by 2030, exceeding an earlier goal of 26 to 28 percent but still well below the targets set by other industrialized nations. And it is one of the last developed nations to make a zero-emissions commitment. Mr. Morrison had agreed to attend the summit only after criticism from Queen Elizabeth II and a in Times Square in New York that mocked his reluctance to address climate change, calling him Coal-o-phile Dundee. Australias inertia points to a pressing challenge for the world: how to get places that profit from a dangerous product to transition before it is too late. With the threat of even more damaging storms and fires looming if temperatures continue to rise, fossil fuel users and producers both need to kick the habit. A released last month found that coal, oil and gas production will keep growing at least until 2040, reaching levels more than double what is needed to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. Australia is a major contributor to the problem. Coal is still king, and natural gas is celebrated. The Great Barrier Reef may be from the heat and acidity caused by climate change, and towns and families burned out by the Black Summer fires of 2019 and 2020 have . Yet in the last month alone, three new coal mining projects have been approved. and While many governments may be racing to head off the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, the economics of global warming are playing out differently in Russia. , with farmers planting corn in parts of Siberia where it never grew before. Winter heating bills are declining, and Russian fishermen have found a modest pollock catch in thawed areas of the Arctic Ocean near Alaska. Nowhere do the prospects seem brighter than in Russias Far North, where rapidly rising temperatures have opened up a panoply of new possibilities, like mining and energy projects. Perhaps the most profound of these is the prospect, as early as next year, of year-round Arctic shipping with specially designed ice class container vessels, offering an alternative to the Suez Canal. The Kremlins . It is not a significant issue in domestic politics. But ever mindful of Russias global image, President Vladimir V. Putin recently vowed for the first time that Russia, the worlds fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and a prodigious producer of fossil fuels, would become . In practice, however, the Russian approach seems to boil down to this: While climate change may be an enormous threat for the future, why not take advantage of the commercial opportunities it offers in the present? Across the Russian Arctic, a consortium of companies supported by the government is midway through a plan to invest about $10 billion to develop the Northeast Passage, a shipping lane between the Pacific and Atlantic that the Russians call the Northern Sea Route. They plan to attract shipping between Asia and Europe that now traverses the Suez Canal and to enable mining, natural gas and tourism ventures. In Pevek, a small port town on the eastern edge of the thawing Arctic, the warming climate is seen as a barely mitigated bonanza. The town has recently added a refurbished port, a new power plant, repaved roads and an esplanade along the Arctic shore. I would call it a rebirth, said Valentina Khristoforova, a curator at a local history museum. We are in a new era. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the worlds fourth largest greenhouse gas-emitting nation, is not physically present at the COP26 climate summit. But on Tuesday he signed on to . The conservation of forests and other natural ecosystems is a key component of international efforts to address global warming and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, Mr. Putin said in a short video address to the conference. He pledged to expand reforestation programs in Russia, which is home to 20 percent of the worlds forests. Russia has vowed to go carbon neutral by 2060, and a key component of that plan relies on using its forests to absorb harmful carbon dioxide emissions and produce oxygen. That has prompted skepticism from leading climate scientists, who say the country is unable to properly monitor its vast forests and continues to invest in producing more oil, gas and coal. Russia is scrambling to retain the wealth and power that come from selling fossil fuels to the world, even as the Kremlin increasingly acknowledges to be a human-made crisis that the country needs to do more to address. Mr. Putins announcement last month that Russia would stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2060 was a remarkable reversal, since he had long dismissed climate science and many in his country see international efforts to address global warming as part of a Western plot to weaken Russia. But in its climate pledges. Russian energy experts and government officials acknowledge that the moves are largely driven by economics, with the European Unions plans for tariffs on heavily polluting countries threatening exports from Russia. and Global leaders must create jobs in the renewable energy sector so that the costs of transitioning from fossil fuels do not exacerbate economic inequalities, Ban Ki-moon, the former United Nations secretary general, said on Wednesday on the sidelines of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. What is absolutely necessary at this time it is critical now is for governments to increase their ambition level, not only in clean energy, but creating millions of new green jobs for the people, Mr. Ban, the U.N. leader from 2007 to 2016, said at the opening of . I believe that we need to be more realistic about the winners and losers of globalization, he said, and take more decisive action in addressing inequality both within and between countries. Around the world, and especially in Europe, leaders are focused on the risks that a shift to a greener economy could lead to , particularly if working-class and middle-class people bear the brunt of the cost. Mr. Ban said there was a need to address the risks of the underlying currents of populist skepticism. He called on industrialized countries to follow through on their pledge to give $100 billion a year to poorer countries to address climate change. They must be serious, because we have no time to lose, he said. Only some of that money, which industrialized countries agreed to last year, has been delivered. Last week, , three years late. Experts have said the amount will not be enough to help poorer countries with the costs of moving their economies away from fossil fuels and coping with damages brought on by extreme weather. Mr. Ban said that he was disappointed that President Xi Jinping of China, the worlds largest emitter of greenhouse gases, was not attending , but that he was encouraged by overseas. It is time, Mr. Ban said, for China, the United States and other countries to bridge the gap between rhetoric and commitment. The time for talk, he said, is over now.