China, India Refuse To End Coal Industry At COP26
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
(Worthy News) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed Sunday that a U.N. climate change gathering managed to sound the “death knell for coal power” despite China and India’s objections.
Johnson told reporters that the 26th edition of the Conference Of the Parties or ‘COP26’ in Glasgow, Scotland, had been a success.
He even called the 200-nation backed Glasgow Climate Pact a “game-changer,” though it wasn’t clear on what he based his enthusiasm.
After nearly two weeks of talks, China and India, two of the world’s largest carbon emitters, asked for a last-minute change to the crucial trumpeted coal part of the agreement.
They called for the “phase down,” not the “phase-out” of coal power. And India, a rising economy of more than 1.3 billion people, also objected to ending subsidies for fossil fuel.
Yet COP26 president Alok Sharma denied the language change represented “a failure,” saying there “was a chance a deal would not be made at all.”
GLOBAL WARMING
Activist group Greenpeace complained, however, that the Glasgow deal kept the goal to keep global warming limited to 1.5 Celsius “only just alive.”
Critics also said the deal didn’t achieve two other U.N. goals, including pledges to cut world carbon dioxide emissions by about half.
Additionally, the talks failed to live up to plans for $100 billion in yearly climate aid from rich countries to poor ones.
Half of that money would help the developing world adapt to the perceived harms of what delegates call a “warming world.”
Island nations could complain that the deal was not even touching the surface of their territories disappearing in rising seas caused by melting ice caps.
Skeptics, including some experts, have questioned the concept of human-caused climate change, saying it may be a natural phenomenon that could reverse.
STEP FORWARD?
Despite perceived setbacks, U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosa said the agreement reached was “a huge step forward” to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
“No deal was the worst possible result there” because in that case, “nobody wins,” the official stressed.
Separately more than 100 world leaders promised earlier to end and reverse deforestation by 2030, in what was hailed as the COP26 climate summit’s first significant deal.
They claim felling trees contribute to climate change because it depletes forests that absorb vast amounts of the warming gas CO2.
Despite U.N. warnings of a global climate catastrophe, some 400 polluting private planes were used to fly world leaders and executives with staff to the gathering.
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