Today at Cop26
Good evening,
It’s night time now in Glasgow, and we’re going to close the blog shortly. The conference is well on its way to the final stretch.
Here are today’s main events:
The world’s most respected climate analysis coalition, the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), announced that temperature rises will top a disastrous 2.4C by the end of this century, based on the short-term goals countries have set out at Cop26.
The UK Met Office warned that 1 billion people will be affected by extreme heat stress if the climate crisis raises the global temperature by just 2C. That includes heating to the point that the human body cannot cool itself by sweating and even healthy people sitting in the shade will die within six hours.
All four UK health secretaries pledged to build climate-resilient health services, alongside 46 other countries making similar commitments. Health services are currently a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 4.6% of the worldwide total.
Canadian and British scientist advisers said substantial changes in behaviour are needed to tackle the climate emergency. Canada’s chief scientific adviser, Mona Nemer, said there would need to be a “profound behavioural and cultural change in terms of our relation to the Earth”.
Cop26 delegates expressed unease about the lack of progress made in discussions with only four days to go before the official end of the conference. “Everything is still to play for but there’s a long way to go,” said Tracy Carty, climate change policy and advocacy lead at Oxfam.
Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hailed Joe Biden’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis, but said the US has “to deliver to get credit on climate change”.
Extinction Rebellion Scotland activists have set up a 24-hour vigil outside JP Morgan Chase – the bank which invests more money in fossil fuels than any other in the world.
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Some neat art installations and designs at Cop (and around the UK) this year.
The Dezeen architecture, interiors and design magazine has reported on the “Sinking House” in Bath, which takes inspiration from Monopoly.
Dezeen explains:
“Sinking House is a 5.5-metre by 3.5-metre bright red timber sculpture designed in a universally recognisable shape that takes cues from classic Monopoly houses.”
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“The world as designed by men has destroyed many things,” Cop26 delegates have been told, as leaders and campaigners warned that the climate crisis could not be ended without the empowerment of women.
Women and girls around the world suffer disproportionately from the impacts of climate breakdown, as they are on average poorer, less educated and more dependent on subsistence farming. A UN report found 80% of those displaced by the climate emergency are women.
The focus on gender equality on Tuesday saw indigenous women and politicians including Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives, demand increased investment.
Angelica Ponce, executive director of the Plurinational Authority for Mother Earth in Bolivia, said: “The world as designed by men has destroyed many things. The world should begin thinking like women. If it was designed by a woman, it would end violence against women and children.
“We want to be in the corridors of power and take part in decisions at international level to end this struggle of climate justice,” she said. “As indigenous women, we live day-by-day the cruel reality of climate change in our land.”
Meanwhile, somebody has graffitied “blood money” on another bank in Glasgow, according to a Glasgow Times reporter.
Police have closed off St Vincent St amid an ongoing demonstration by Extinction Rebellion.
— Ruth Suter (@RuthSuter_) November 9, 2021
Activists have sat themselves in the middle of the road in a rubber dingy while “blood money” has been sprayed onto the Santander building. @Glasgow_Times pic.twitter.com/ZqpoXUUwVf
Extinction Rebellion starts 24-hour vigil outside JP Morgan Chase
Activists from Extinction Rebellion Scotland have just started a 24-hour vigil outside JP Morgan Chase – the bank which invests more money in fossil fuels than any other in the world.
Activists from @ScotlandXr starting a 24-hour vigil outside JP Morgan, the bank which invests the most money in fossil fuels - “I’ve got my long johns and nappy on” said one protester pic.twitter.com/v9oqobdRAB
— Jessica Murray (@JournoJess_) November 9, 2021
“Just last month, [JP Morgan Chase] said they’re going to continue in fossil fuels,” said protester Gary Jack, 60, a part-time crofter who travelled down to the city from north of Inverness. “And the reasoning behind that was, they can use the profit to invest in renewables. So their logic is, make the problem worse to gain more money to try and make it better – which is bonkers.”
The activists said they have been visiting the Glasgow branch every day since the start of Cop26 and metal fences had already been put up outside the entrance before they got there. “I think it’s an admission of guilt, that they have to barricade themselves in,” Jack said.
He added that police had also been positioned outside the bank every night: “That’s taxpayers’ money funding the police to protect the baddest bank in the world.”
He said the with UN climate change conference being in the city, Scottish environmental activists were keen to make the most of the global spotlight being on them.
“This is it. We’re not going to travel halfway around the world for the next Cop, and this is the one that needs to make the big decisions. There’s a fork in the road here. So we’re going to do everything we can and that’s why I’m here every day.”
JPMorgan Chase launched a “Paris-aligned financing strategy” last year, pledging to set intermediate emission targets for 2030 for its financing portfolio
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A reminder: It’s Gender Day today at Cop26.
And with that, the UK government pledged to fund £165m to help “progress gender equality while tackling climate change”.
WaterAid, a charity working on supplying clean water and decent toilets, has lauded the announcement but said it is not enough.
Kathryn Pharr, Senior Policy Advisor on International Climate Action, WaterAid, said:
While we welcome the UK government’s pledge, sadly it is just a drop in the ocean of funding needed to support the millions of women and girls across the globe who are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.
More severe floods and droughts will only increase this injustice as women and girls are forced to walk further to collect water for their households, miss out on going to school, getting jobs and fulfilling their potential.
This announcement needs to be an urgent rallying cry to other governments to follow suit and truly equip women and girls to be leaders in the fight against climate change, rather than victims, and to put gender equality at the heart of climate action.
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Maybe that was too easy a test for liveblog readers.
Cop-watchers will know that, over the years, there have been several Cop presidents who are women. In fact, the president of the last summit, Cop25, was a woman: Chile’s Carolina Schmidt.
BUT there are big gaps in diversity and inclusiveness at Cop, not just this year but all years.
Last year, a campaign was launched to address that. Called SHEChangesClimate, its goal is to ensure “all delegations, for all climate negotiations, have at least a 50% representation of diverse women at their top levels”.
You can read more about the campaign here.
A little test for people who have closely watched Cop over the years.
We’ve been getting a lot of press releases here at the Guardian during Cop26. One just landed in a colleague’s inbox that caught her eye. To save the marketing agency embarrassment, I won’t mention who sent it, but have a read of the below and try to guess what might be wrong:
“Leading voices from the business world have joined with environmental and social activists, scientists and politicians to urge that the president of Cop27 is a woman. If successful, this would be the first woman president in Cop history.”
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Only a tiny fraction of Cop26 delegates have tested positive for Covid-19, largely due to the “exceptional” measures taken to limit infections, the Scottish government has said.
John Swinney, the deputy first minister, told MSPs on Tuesday only 0.1% of delegates with passes for the summit’s ‘blue zone’ tested positive by Friday last week, a period covering the first week of the event. He said a full update would follow when the summit ends.
Delegates have to complete and register daily lateral flow tests; produce evidence of their tests results; show vaccination certificates and observe distancing at events. Those measures led to many of the lengthy queues and delays getting into the conference zone last week.
Swinney said the event, which could lead to Covid infection rates spiking again, was being monitored very closely.
“Covid-19 has presented significant challenges to staging this unique event. The scale and worldwide draw of Cop26 poses risk of spread of Covid-19 both within delegates and to or from the local population of Scotland and the UK.
“A comprehensive and exceptional package of mitigation measures has been in place to ensure the event is delivered safely, helping to protect the welfare of everyone involved and the wider community.”
The speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has just been (you guessed it) speaking at an event attended by the press and US congresspeople.
“This is all about the children,” she says. “Leaving a world where they can be healthy, more secure, and more in reach of their fulfilment.”
We have a live feed above.
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It’s a glorious sunny afternoon outside the summit venue as the band strikes up for an impromptu ceilidh (Scottish or Irish social gathering) organised by Extinction Rebellion Scotland.
Good effort at the @ScotlandXr ceilidh outside the #cop26 summit just now pic.twitter.com/G4RZXdYLAY
— Libby Brooks (@libby_brooks) November 9, 2021
The ever-patient caller takes the international crowd through the steps to the Gay Gordons dance just as the Welsh Kitchen, which appears at XR events across the city, sets up. Today it’s cottage pie on the menu.
US must ‘deliver to get credit’ on climate crisis, says Ocasio-Cortez
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Congresswoman, has warned that the US “has not recovered our moral authority” following the Donald Trump years.
Speaking at a sideline event at Cop, Ocasio-Cortez was among a group of Democrats who hailed Joe Biden’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis. But while she said America “is back” in the climate conversation, the Congresswoman said this needs to be matched by actions.
“We have to deliver to get credit on climate change, it’s as simple as that,” she said.
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(Stepping away from the press conference, which just ended, a bit of political drama from our Scotland editor, Severin Carrell)
The Greens leader of Brighton and Hove city council has apologised for “a major failure of judgment” after flying from London to Glasgow, where he lambasted the UK government for ineffective action on climate change at the Cop26 summit.
Phelim MacCafferty, who also co-chairs the council’s carbon neutrality working group, admitted he took the flight instead of going by train on Friday, arguing he was worried about warnings that rail travellers faced delays that day.
The next day, MacCafferty represented Brighton and Hove at an event to present the Glasgow declaration on climate, attended by Greta Thunberg, and was at the mass march through the city on Saturday. Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, travelled to Glasgow by train.
If we are to truly see change at COP26, we need world leaders to transform land use, to cap emissions from food and farming
— Cllr Phélim Mac Cafferty (@Phelimmac) November 6, 2021
My speech from this morning with global cities @COP26 to present the Glasgow Food and Climate Declarationhttps://t.co/zSSaa45oXw pic.twitter.com/8E5xahnA4i
He had been challenged about his travel by the Brighton Argus, a local paper. “This decision to fly was a major failure of my judgment which goes against my political group’s pledges and principles and I unreservedly apologise,” he told the paper.
“I reluctantly took this very difficult decision because I was concerned about the unreliability of the rail network following the well-publicised difficulties experienced by many people wanting to travel by train to Glasgow the week before, when trains were cancelled.
“I was concerned that this would happen again and I felt it was important not to miss the opportunity to attend the important presentation on behalf of the city, lobby world leaders and share with others the innovative work taking place in Brighton and Hove.”
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Here is the key quote from the CAT press conference (live in the video above) from Bill Hare, the chief executive of Climate Analytics:
Glasgow was meant to keep the Paris agreement’s 1.5 degree limit in sight, but the 2030 emissions gap is still so huge that we can’t really see that being possible at present.
Scientists have warned that beyond 1.5C, some of the damage to the earth’s climate will become irreversible.
The CAT analysts also found a chasm between what countries have said they will do on greenhouse gas emissions and their plans in reality. If current policies and measures are taken into account, rather than just goals, heating would rise to 2.7C, based on the CAT analysis.
Read the full report here:
This might come as a shock to avid readers. That is because just last week, other organisations published more optimistic forecasts of 1.9C or 1.8C.
However, those estimates were based on long-term goals set out by countries including India, the world’s third-biggest emitter, which is aiming for net-zero emissions by 2070.
By contrast, the CAT based its analysis on countries’ short-term goals for the next decade.
Bill Hare, the chief executive of Climate Analytics, one of the organisations behind CAT, explains why long-term goals are misleading:
We are concerned that some countries are trying to portray [Cop26] as if the 1.5C limit is nearly in the bag. But it’s not, it’s very far from it, and they are downplaying the need to get short-term targets for 2030 in line with 1.5C.
Niklas Höhne, an author of the report, said:
Countries’ long-term intentions are good, but their short-term implementation is inadequate.
In other words, we can make promises for the future, but we need to make drastic and immediate changes in the next few years to avoid disaster.
Updated
World on a disastrous path to 2.4C heating based on short term Cop26 pledges
And … the results are in. It’s very bad news.
The Climate Action Tracker (CAT), the world’s most respected climate analysis coalition, has announced that temperature rises will top 2.4C by the end of this century, based on the short-term goals countries have set out at Cop26.
That is a disastrous level of global heating far in excess of the limits in the Paris climate agreement, despite a flurry of carbon-cutting pledges from governments at this year’s UN summit.
At that level, widespread extreme weather – sea level rises, drought, floods, heatwaves and fiercer storms – would cause devastation across the globe.
A reminder: the Paris accord aspirations were of “well below” 2C upper limit, and the much safer 1.5C limit.
Updated
In twenty minutes, what could be the biggest news of the day is going to drop: the results of the Climate Action Tracker.
What’s that?
- The CAT is the world’s most respected climate analysis coalition, providing independent reports to policymakers since 2009.
What does it do?
- It tracks and monitors government climate action and, since 2015, measures it against the globally agreed Paris Agreement aims.
What are those?
- For the first time, rich and poor countries joined together in a legally binding treaty pledging to hold global heating to well below 2C, the scientifically-advised limit of safety, with an aspiration not to breach 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
What will CAT say this year?
- You will find out shortly.
I’m Oliver Holmes, taking over the blog. I’ll be with you for the rest of the day. If you see anything you think deserves a spot on here, email me at: oliver.holmes@theguardian.com
I’m going to hand over to my colleague Oliver Holmes for the rest of the afternoon and he’ll keep you updated. Thanks and bye!
AP also reporting that US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is also at Cop, was asked if she had a message to young activists who have pressed governments to cut climate-damaging fossil fuel pollution. She told reporters: “Well, I would say, Stay in the streets. Keep pushing.”
Ocasio-Cortez was one of a number of democrats who voted against Biden’s infrastructure bill.
Updated
Am just looking at Associated Press which is reporting that Nancy
Pelosi, the US speaker of the House of Representatives, has said we need to put women and girls at the centre of efforts to fight climate change, pointing out that they are disproportionately affected by the impacts of a warming planet.
Pelosi is leading a delegation of congressional Democrats to the UN climate talks in Glasgow this week to send a message that the US has rejoined international initiatives to curb climate change after the Trump years.
Global warming “is a threat multiplier, amplifying and accelerating existing inequities in our economies and societies,” she said during a Tuesday meeting focused on gender and climate change.
A report by the UN Development Program has estimated that 80% of those displaced by climate change are women. Pelosi said a a $1.85 trillion package of measures focused on health, family and climate change reflected the Biden administration’s goal to “build back better with women”. Democratic holdouts have the bill currently stalled in Congress.
Echoing President Joe Biden, Pelosi said: “America is back together for the planet, for the women, for our children.”
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Growing anxiety about slow progress on the text
With four days to go before the official end of Cop26 on Friday, there is unease among delegates about the lack of progress made in discussions.
“Everything is still to play for but there’s a long way to go to ensure Glasgow is remembered for the right reasons,” said Tracy Carty, climate change policy and advocacy lead at Oxfam.
At a press conference hosted by the Climate Action Network, she said there were high hopes for another text due out on Wednesday, “but in terms of the normal rhythm of things, we’d expect to be where we are now much earlier, things are running very late”.
“I think ending Cop on Friday is very ambitious, so be prepared to change your trains,” she added. “Obama came here recognising the huge diplomatic lift that is needed now. Maybe Boris Johnson can come back to help move things along. That’s the level of political engagement we need.”
Also speaking at the event was Iemaima Vaai from the Pacific Conference of Churches who spoke of the alarm among indigenous communities at the slow pace of progress. “We talk about 2030. For us low-lying countries by then a whole country could be relocated and displaced,” she said.
“Our climate reality in the Pacific is now having to accept relocation as an adaptation measure. Coastal communities have had to transition, taking up new skills and knowledge on farming and relocating inland. And worst, they’ve had to pay these relocation costs even though they contribute the least to the climate crisis.”
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At the entrance to the blue zone, a group of Indigenous Activists are staging a memorial to highlight the link between “the ongoing violence towards Indigenous women, queer, trans, and two-spirit peoples and the extractive industries that created the climate crisis”.
“We reject colonising messages that tell us what lifestyles are right or wrong, says Panganga Pungowiyi, from Alaska. “We see the parallels between the abuse of our land and the abuse of our people.”
Nuskmata from the Nuxalk community on the Canadian border said: “We have a highway in the north called the highway of tears, where so many of our women and girls have been stolen. We have mining extraction without consent, deforestation, industrial salmon farms, all these things are linked.”
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Hallo, I’ll be following events at Cop26 for the next couple of hours. My colleague Libby Brooks has just filmed these rather excellent drummers outside the conference centre.
‘We are watching you #cop26’ Drummers outside the summit venue this morning pic.twitter.com/2dsQcdULwP
— Libby Brooks (@libby_brooks) November 9, 2021
That’s it from me today. Thanks for reading and contributing. I’ll hand over now to my colleague Bibi, and leave you with this story – about two delegates from the Cop26 negotiations visiting a charity shop in Glasgow that specialises in benefitting the formerly homeless people who live and work there.
Chile’s Gonzalo Muñoz and the UK’s Nigel Topping toured the the Emmaus shop and community building on Ellesmere Street in Hamiltonhill.
Emmaus helps people with experience of homelessness learn how to repair and upcycle donations that might otherwise go to landfill, sorting items, testing products and stripping goods for valuable metal.
Some of the highlights of our visit from #COP26 UN Climate Champions @gmunozabogabir and @topnigel.
— Emmaus Glasgow (@EmmausGlasgow) November 8, 2021
Gonzalo Munoz and Nigel Topping loved our poster of @NicolaSturgeon, checking in on whether journeys are essential travel. Their visit was definitely one of them! pic.twitter.com/CjeU2FRX0M
Muñoz reportedly bought a teapot.
Cop26: so what's actually on the table?
The last lap is the hardest in any race and that’s where the Cop26 climate summit is as it enters its last few days. The glitzy opening ceremony with world leaders is a fading memory and now it’s the hard yards of negotiation and compromise for their ministers.
They must finalise the rules of the 2015 Paris deal so countries cannot cheat their way to the carbon-cutting finish line of net zero. The complex, technical texts belie their importance – disputes over a single word could provoke walk outs by some negotiators.
So what’s on the table?
“Transparency” – code for regular UN-led checks on how countries’ are delivering. This is seen as the backbone of the Paris agreement by many. The US is very keen, China is not.
“Article 6” – the rules for an international market in carbon credits through which nations can offset their own pollution by paying for cuts elsewhere. That’s a vital way to cut carbon efficiently, or a scam to delay cuts, depending on who you ask. African nations say a cut from credit sales should be used to fund adaptation to extreme weather in vulnerable countries, but the US sees that as an unacceptable tax.
“Loss and damage” – perhaps the most sensitive of all the issues, this is money from the rich nations that mostly caused global heating to the poor nations that mostly suffer. Reparations say some, with Scotland the first to offer cash, but many nations are reluctant.
There’s more. Will the “cover decision” agreed by all nations firmly target a temperature limit of 1.5C, which scientists now say is vital, or stick with the more vague “under 2C” of Paris? Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is lobbying for the latter. Will countries agree to upgrade their emissions pledges every year, rather than every five? Will a decade-old promise of $100bn to fund clean development in low-income countries finally be delivered, and will this increase in future?
These are the hard yards that matter if the climate crisis is to end. You can’t cheat atmospheric physics. So the world has to win this race clean and win it fast, with the clock at a minute to midnight. The Guardian will be reporting from the Glasgow finish line with this in mind: winning the climate race slowly is simply another way of losing.
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A viral video posted by the celebrity chef and noted idiot Salt Bae in which he serves steak covered in gold leaf to the head of Vietnam’s delegation to the Cop26 climate change summit has drawn criticism of hypocrisy, greenwashing and general forehead-smacking weirdness.
To Lam, the minister of public security of the nominally communist country, left the summit in Glasgow to travel to London, where he visited the grave of Karl Marx, founded of communism.
He then visited the restaurant of Nusret Gökçe, Salt Bae’s real name, who posted the video to TikTok showing him feeding Lam gold-covered meat directly into his mouth. Meals at the restaurant, slated hilariously in an indirect review by my colleague Jay Rayner, can cost thousands of pounds.
Bộ trưởng Bộ Công an Việt Nam Tô Lâm được Salt Bae chế biến và đút cho ăn món bò dát vàng trị giá lên đến 45 triệu đồng/phần trong một nhà hàng của ông này ở Luân Đôn. Cùng bàn với ông Tô Lâm là Chánh văn phòng Bộ Công an Tô Ân Xô. pic.twitter.com/hGZZqGbJZr
— Duy Bình (@DuyBnh61157516) November 5, 2021
As Vice magazine put it: “There’s nothing more 2021 than Salt Bae feeding a communist party official gold-plated steak after a climate change summit.”
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'We must change behaviour if we're going to cut emissions' say health chiefs
Patrick Vallance has echoed Barack Obama’s call to stick to the target of 1.5C.
Changes in behaviour are needed to tackle the climate emergency, the UK’s chief scientific adviser told the summit. He said behaviour change was starting to happen but needed to go further and said he now cycled to work, ate less meat and had taken the train to the climate summit in Glasgow.
He also said that the climate crisis was a far bigger problem than coronavirus and would kill more people if changes were not made now.
Canada’s chief scientific adviser, Mona Nemer, said there would need to be a “profound behavioural and cultural change in terms of our relation to the Earth”.
Speaking to my former Guardian colleague Adam Vaughan, now at New Scientist, Vallance added:
There’s actually quite a lot of hope. The technologies we need are either here or in development. The second reason for hope is we’ve got a whole generation that’s absolutely determined to do this. There’s behaviour change happening right the way across the globe. Third is: some of the commitments at this conference are going to make a difference in getting people together.”
The UK govt’s chief scientific adviser, @uksciencechief, says the UK is not doing enough on changing people’s behaviour to tackle climate change. What does he hope #cop26 will achieve? “1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5,” he tells me. pic.twitter.com/UsRpkauw0D
— Adam Vaughan (@adamvaughan_uk) November 9, 2021
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India’s indigenous Adivasi people have denounced Narendra Modi for hypocrisy, saying he proclaimed his green credentials at Cop26 while planning to massively expand coal mining on their lands.
The India prime minister’s plan to open 55 new coal mines, expand 193 existing ones and produce 1 billion tonnes of coal a year would destroy the land and livelihood of many Adivasi people, they said, noting that 80% of the new mines will be on Adivasi land.
They point to the Hasdeo Forest in Chhattisgarh, home to a roughly 20,000-strong Adivasi community, where two coal mines are already operational, and a third, Parsa, to be operated by the mining giant Adani, has been approved.
The ripple effects of Cop26 are being felt right across Glasgow as businesses seek to boost their green credentials in light of the event.
In its own unique take on renewable energy, Glaswegian nightclub SWG3 is hoping to become the first in the world to create a heating system powered by the body heat of dancers. The human body emits 100 watts of heat when resting, and more when exercising.
SWG3’s Bodyheat project will see this heat captured through air conditioning and piped through to twelve 150m-deep boreholes beneath the venue. The energy can then be used immediately to cool the audience, or stored underground for months until it’s needed to heat the building.
🌍 #InnovatingtoNetZero | 10 Days of #ClimateInnovation in and around #Glasgow
— Glasgow City of Science and Innovation (@cityofscience) November 9, 2021
💃 Glasgow's @SWG3glasgow nightclub will power the venue with body heat
💡 Will save 70 tonnes of C02 annually
🔗 Explore 70+ climate innovations at https://t.co/dLcOGg31YY #TogetherForOurPlanet pic.twitter.com/Vxszuvcv6J
“The great thing about this project is that it talks directly to our audience and it’s accessible where people can come to a gig or a club and contribute to this system,” managing director Andrew Fleming-Brown told the Scotsman.
The venue had planned to trial the new technology during Cop26 but its completion date has been pushed back to early 2022.
“This is our innovative contribution to a global issue, and will help us to dramatically decrease our energy consumption – bringing us one step closer to becoming a carbon-neutral venue in the not so distant future,” said Fleming-Brown.
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The climate activist group Glasgow Calls Out Polluters blockaded a business dinner last night, some chaining bicycles across the road and others glueing themselves to the main door of the venue. The dinner was organised by the World Business Council on Sustainable Development and was themed around Adaptation, Loss and Damage – a key agenda item at Cop26.
Jonny Marsh from the group told BBC Radio Scotland this morning that the event theme “definitely falls under the umbrella of greenwashing”.
great action tonight in Maryhill, locking on to prevent @wbcsd members inc @Shell and @bp_plc from attending their private dinner.
— Natasha (@its_ninooo) November 9, 2021
campaigners from @SaveMaryhill came along to show their solidarity too
local community power 🤝 climate action pic.twitter.com/GoGylBBGth
“Some of the companies and people in that room such as Claire Perry, one of the directors and an ex-president of Cop, have known since the 80s about detailed research into climate change, so to have them posit themselves as the solution is ridiculous when they’ve known about it for decades.”
Marsh added: “We were there to amplify the voices of those who haven’t been invited to such an exclusionary event, the indigenous folks of the world and the global south who are most affected by climate change don’t have a seat at the table.”
There were 16 arrests at the protest.
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A weekly poll conducted by YouGov and released this morning suggests that concern over the environment in the UK is higher than ever.
Of the respondents, 40% named environment as one of their top three issues for the country, along with health and the economy.
“This is the highest level of concern we have ever seen, almost certainly due to the impact of Cop26 on public awareness,” said Anthony Wells, director of YouGov’s political and social opinion polling.
“What remains to be seen is whether climate change remains such a high priority once the conference moves on.”
Praised for his clarion call yesterday not to give up on the stated Cop26 goal of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5C, Barack Obama is also taking a wee bit of heat for mixing his monikers.
The former US president referred to Scotland as the “Emerald Isle”. Cue outrage.
Next we’ll be hearing he doesn’t like Irn-Bru.
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UK health secretaries join to promise net-zero health services
All four UK health secretaries are pledging to build climate-resilient health services this morning as they commit to become net zero, alongside 46 other countries making similar commitments as part of Science and Innovation Day at Cop26.
Health services are currently a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for around 4.6% of the worldwide total, meaning if they were one country, health systems would be the fifth-largest emitter.
The pledge will fit with the UK government’s commitment to the entire country being net zero by 2050. The NHS in Scotland has committed to being a net zero carbon emissions health service by 2045, while in Wales the ambition is for the public sector to be collectively net zero by 2030.
The health and social care secretary, Sajid Javid, said: “As a health community, we cannot simply sit on the sidelines - we must respond to climate change through urgent action, with global collaboration at its core.”
Speaking at NHS Scotland’s Sustainability Conference today, Scotland’s health secretary, Humza Yousaf, underlined the fact that the climate emergency is not just an environmental crisis but also a public health crisis.
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The world’s biggest car companies are reportedly refusing to sign a deal to end new car emissions by 2040, which is set to be unveiled in the final days of the Cop26 summit.
According to the FT, Volkswagen and Toyota, the two largest motor giants, are holdouts, with the former reportedly refusing the deal outright.
Two UK officials also said Germany, China and the US had not signed, although there is some optimism that the Americans might yet overcome fears of the domestic backlash and ink the deal.
Various reasons have been given for not signing the deal, including the carmakers’ belief that the transition to green vehicles will not happen fast enough in some of their key markets.
Volvo, GM, Ford and Daimler have all agreed to sign. The collective pledge would work toward ending sales of polluting car models by 2040.
Moby, the McCartneys, Joaquin Phoenix and Gandhi’s grand-daughter Ela are among the celebrities who have urged Cop26 to adopt the Plant Based Treaty campaign today.
Modelled on the better known Fossil Fuel Treaty, the treaty aims to “put food systems at the forefront of combating the climate crisis”. It calls for a shift to healthier, sustainable, plant-based diets to mitigate the effects of the environmental damage caused by rearing animals for meat.
In a joint statement, the McCartney family, who launched the Meat Free Monday campaign in 2009, said: “We believe in justice for animals, the environment and people. That’s why we support the Plant Based Treaty and urge individuals and governments to sign it.”
Ela Gandhi added:
I believe that the indiscriminate breeding of animals for consumption is harmful both for health as well as for the environment. The animal industry has also contributed, to a large extent, to the deterioration of the fertility of our soil and thus the environment. Large forests have had to make way for cattle farmers all over the world.
Gandhiji in his bid to transform his modestly affluent lifestyle in 1904 was driven by three important considerations of which one was that a life worth living is that of the tiller of the soil and the handicrafts person. Living close to nature was part of his teachings. [The] Plant Based Treaty is calling for just that.”
The foreign minister of Tuvalu, the low-lying Pacific island nation, has recorded a video speech for Cop26 while standing knee-deep in seawater.
Simon Kofe stood in a suit and tie to deliver his speech about Tuvalu’s struggle against rising sea levels.
“We are sinking,” he said. “But so is everybody else.”
When sweating no longer works
Good morning, and thanks for following our coverage so far. It’s gender day at Cop26, as well as science and innovation day, and all eyes will be on the Climate Action Tracker report released this afternoon.
Remember: the key goal of Cop26 is to keep the chance of limiting global heating to 1.5C alive. But there is much work to do to achieve this in the summit’s final week.
Meanwhile, the news overnight is that a billion people will be affected by extreme heat stress if the climate crisis raises the global temperature by just 2C, according to research released by the UK Met Office.
The Met Office assessed wet-bulb temperature, which combines both heat and humidity. Once this measure reaches 35C, the human body cannot cool itself by sweating and even healthy people sitting in the shade will die within six hours.
Read Damian Carrington’s report:
Updated
