“Now is the time to make decisions. The decisions you make will be vital,” COP26 President Alok Sharma warned at the end of the conference in Glasgow.
COP26 began on October 31, with world leaders gathering in Glasgow and making a series of loud announcements, ranging from promises to reduce methane emissions to plans to save rainforests.
In 2015, the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris called for limiting global warming to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and, if possible, to 1.5 degrees Celsius. However, current national emission reduction plans, scientists say, will lead to catastrophic global warming to 2.7 degrees Celsius.
The UN climate conference was due to end on November 12, but that’s it had to extend, as countries failed to agree on conditions to mitigate the effects of climate change. The biggest controversy was the financing of climate change mitigation, fossil fuel subsidies and the abandonment of coal. An agreement was reached the next day.
The Glasgow Climate Pact is the first such agreement to explicitly abandon coal as a fuel, as it is the most climate-damaging fossil fuel and has a greenhouse effect. The agreement also calls for urgent reductions in emissions and promises more resources for developing countries to help them adapt to the effects of climate change. However, the goals of the agreement will not be able to prevent global temperatures from rising by one and a half degrees Celsius.
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