Global COP26 climate negotiations are the “last, best hope” to keep the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C alive, said summit president Alok Sharma as he opened the meeting on Sunday.
The Glasgow gathering, which runs to November 12, comes as an accelerating onslaught of extreme weather events across the world underscores the devastating impacts of climate change from 150 years of burning fossil fuels.
“We know that our shared planet is changing for the worse,” said Sharma at the opening ceremony.
Experts warn that only transformative action in the next ten years will help stave off far more cataclysmic impacts.
And the warming of the planet did not pause for the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused the UN meeting to be delayed by a year.
COP26 inherits its central goal from the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, which saw countries agree to cap global warming at “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels, and 1.5C if possible.
That deal left many crucial details to be worked out, while emissions reductions remain woefully insufficient to avert global warming.
In August a bombshell “code red” report from the world’s top climate science body warned that Earth’s average temperature will hit the 1.5C threshold around 2030, a decade earlier than projected only three years ago.
And last week a UN report said even the latest, most ambitious carbon-cutting commitments would still lead to “catastrophic” warming of 2.7C.
COP26 now marks the “last, best hope to keep 1.5C in reach”, said Sharma.
“If we act now and we act together we can protect our precious planet,” he said
