As the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, enters its final day Friday, global leaders can point to signs of real progress. But the Earth is still headed for a dangerous level of warming.
The point of these talks was for countries to announce ambitious carbon-cutting pledges that would prevent the world from warming more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.
That did not happen. Despite some new promises, and old promises repackaged as new ones, an analysis by the independent group Climate Action Tracker found that with all the short-term pledges added together, the world is likely to heat up by 4.3 degrees this century. That’s better than the path the world was on before the Paris agreement six years ago, when scientists predicted nearly 7.2 degrees of warming. But the consequences would still be catastrophic, resulting in deadlier wildfires and floods, famine and the extinction of more species.
Negotiations over what countries will do to combat climate change going forward are still ongoing. Here’s a look at what’s been accomplished so far — and what remains unresolved.
Side deals were the main event this time
This year’s summit was unusual. Typically, the main event is the final agreement, painfully hammered out over two weeks of daily negotiations between representatives from nearly 200 countries. This time, most of the action happened on the sidelines:
• Nearly 100 countries joined a global pledge to limit emissions of methane, a planet-warming gas more potent as a polluter than carbon dioxide. Still more signed a pact to prevent further deforestation by 2030.
• A coalition of countries, cities and automakers, including Ford, General Motors, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz, committed to phase out sales of new fossil-fuel vehicles by 2040 and by 2035 in “leading markets.”
• More than 40 countries pledged to phase out coal by 2030 and stop building coal-fired power plants, helping eliminate the largest source of planet-warming gases globally.
• In a test of whether industrialized nations are capable of helping developing countries shift to cleaner sources of energy, South Africa reached a deal with the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and the European Union under which it would receive $8.5 billion over the next five years to transition away from coal.
• The U.S., Denmark and other countries agreed to work toward zeroing out emissions from the shipping industry by 2050 and creating at least six zero-emission shipping routes. If these changes are enacted, governments could require, for example, that only emissions-free ships travel from Shanghai to Los Angeles.
There are reasons to be skeptical of many of these agreements, environmental advocates said. Brazil and Indonesia, countries that are destroying their forests, joined the deforestation pledge. And some of the world’s largest coal-burning countries, including China, Australia and India, didn’t sign the pledge to phase out the fossil fuel.
But the level of deal-making at the summit is an “enormous sign of success,” said Sarah Ladislaw, a managing director at the independent, Colorado-based clean energy research organization the Rocky Mountain Institute. More than ever before, she said, countries, industry, investors and philanthropists are working together to reach side deals that could have a huge effect, adding that the conference should not be judged solely on whether “something very big and new” came out of the official negotiating process.
Beyond swagger, what went down between
the U.S. and China?
