Queen Elizabeth II will attend UN climate change talks in Glasgow
Britains Queen Elizabeth II will attend a pivotal United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow this fall, organizers said in a tweet Friday, giving a royal boost to the event. The United Kingdom is hosting global leaders for the nearly two weeks of talks in the Scottish city from October 31 to November 12. The talks, known as COP26, will come on the heels of the G20 meeting in Rome and is expected to draw many of the groups leaders to open the negotiations. The Queen attended G7 talks in Cornwall earlier this year, where climate was discussed. The British government, which is organizing the talks, has insisted that COP26 will go ahead despite the challenges of international travel brought by the pandemic. COP26 would be one of the biggest in-person international events since the pandemic began. The event is happening against the backdrop of a series of extreme weather events across the Northern Hemisphere, including heatwaves and wildfires in parts of North America, southern Europe and North Africa, as well as floods in China and Western Europe. It also follows the release of a state-of-the-science report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found that global warming has happened more quickly than they previously understood and that the human influence on climate is unequivocal. COP26 President Alok Sharma has set out a loose agenda for the talks, focused on getting leaders to commit to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to stave off worsening impacts of the climate crisis. There will also be a focus on putting an end date on the use of coal, and boosting wealthy nations payments to the global south to assist countries as they adapt to the climate crisis and prepare for a net zero future, in which the world will emit no more greenhouse gases than it removes.