As the young march on COP26, the older delegates and politicians inside take stock of progress made in week one of the UN climate summit. Rod Oram watched both.
The future swept aside the past in Glasgow’s George Square yesterday as some 10,000 young people demanded COP delegates – from politics and civil society -- deliver a future for them and others. It was Youth and Public Empowerment Day at the COP26 climate negotiations.
The square, built in the late 1780s with money from Scottish merchants made wealthy by tobacco, sugar, cotton and slave trading overseas, is a monument to past glory. A statue of Walter Scott stands atop a tall column in the centre, flanked my more modest statues of Robbie Burns, Robert Peel and other famous Scots.
“I feel the hope is in the people on the streets and in people power,” said Kim one of the march co-ordinators. “The climate movement’s been quite fringe for a long time. And now we're really seeing that change’s on everyone's agenda. That gives me a lot of hope. And in COP itself we’re seeing movement, we’re seeing people shifting.”
Before the main “Fridays for the Future” march arrived in the early afternoon younger children and other protestors gathered in the square as a youth band played.
As the youth speeches began in the square, a COP session assessing progress towards the 1.5C goal for the negotiations was starting in the Plenary Hall, named after Cairn Gorm, (sic…that’s the style their using here) Scotland’s highest mountain.
Al Gore, climate champion and former US politician, quoted Churchill about a “period of consequence.” Now was the time, Gore said, humanity had to solve the climate crisis. Ranging widely across technology, social inclusivity and political change, he said “we have the tools we need.”
Next, a positive assessment of the first week of the negotiations was given by two key leaders in the UK’s hosting of COP26 – Lord Adair Turner, chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, a global coalition of energy sector leaders, and Nigel Topping, co-lead on the Race to Zero, a UN campaign to rally leadership and support from businesses, cities, regions and investors.
To meet the 1.5C goal for COP26, Turner said the UN needed new pledges to total 22 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions cuts by 2030. This past week delivered 9 gt of that, leaving the challenge of a further 13 gt this coming week.
Turner particularly emphasised the importance of the launch this week of the Global Methane Pledge, with more than a hundred countries promising to seek cuts totalling 30 percent by 2030. That would potentially double the emissions reductions that had come through this week in some improved Nationally Determined Contributions, which are the formal UN climate commitments from individual nations, he said.
He also said more progress towards ending coal-fired electricity generation was possible in the coming week, with significant commitments from sectors such as steel and aviation which will have their time in the COP26 programme in coming days.
“We must maintain the momentum we’ve achieved over the first week,” Turner said.
Before the start of negotiations, existing commitments were consistent with a 2.5 to 2.7C rise in temperature. But new pledges in the first four days of COP26 had improved that to 1.8C, according to analysis by the International Energy Agency.
“This feels very much like an implementation COP, a real economy COP,” Topping said. “A real convergence of common goals is creating system change.”
Greater commitments from government are spurring bigger goals from sectors and companies. “We are starting to embrace the ambition feedback loop. Now we just have to hit the accelerator.”
The sense of urgency and purpose is evident throughout the COP programme and the efforts of the 25,000 or so delegates. Many of the ones I’ve spoken to this week demonstrate the essential blend of: cold-eyed realism about the crisis and the short time left to solve it; great creativity and unrelenting enthusiasm for acting; and huge skill and desire to find people to work with.
What is the median age of delegates is a question I’ve put to the UN, and I’m awaiting an answer. But scanning the throngs of people, my hunch is late-30s or early-40s. I suspect, though, the median age of political delegates might be higher than civil society ones, which would suggest the politicians could be a drag on progress.
The work and themes of COP are being amplified far and wide around Glasgow through a large and rich programme of civil society events. Their topics run the gamut from social justice, culture and the arts to nature, health, business and many others.
Just one example last Sunday was the inter-faith rally in George Square with representatives of all the great religions of the world, which was beamed around the world. It was followed by a Pacific-inspired talanoa dialogue between faiths on how they can help people and communities meet the enormous challenges of the climate crisis.
And it was a great privilege for me to involved in a conversation with Bill McKibben, the veteran US climate activist, author and leader of the fossil fuel divestment movement. Here are a few themes from that conversation we recorded after. And I’ll include a link to the video of the full event in a later story, once it's uploaded to the University’s website.
