Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: China’s top climate change envoy, Xie Zhenhua, apologized as he entered late for a weekend meeting at the United Nations climate summit. “We have quite busy schedules,” Mr. Xie said, according to two people who were present for the exchange. “Especially for me, I have to meet with John Kerry almost every day.” In an unexpected development, the United States and China on Wednesday announced in a joint statement that they will both do more…

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Inside Climate News reports: Discontent about lack of progress on climate financing for vulnerable countries spilled into the second week of climate negotiations in Glasgow during Monday’s opening session of COP26, when representatives of all 197 countries at the United Nations Climate talks had a chance to directly address conference president Alok Sharma. How to financially aid developing countries that hold almost no historical responsibility for global warming but are most vulnerable to its intensifying impacts has been a thorny…

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Bill McKibben writes: As the second week of the COP26 United Nations global climate talks began in Glasgow on Monday, the Washington Post published a truly remarkable piece of reporting that will surely demoralize the hardworking people gathered in the convention hall trying to hammer out an agreement. A team led by the Post’s veteran climate analyst Chris Mooney went through the emissions data proffered by countries at the summit, and found that they were in many cases wildly wrong….

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BBC News reports: There are more delegates at COP26 associated with the fossil fuel industry than from any single country, analysis shared with the BBC shows. Campaigners led by Global Witness assessed the participant list published by the UN at the start of this meeting. They found that 503 people with links to fossil fuel interests had been accredited for the climate summit. These delegates are said to lobby for oil and gas industries, and campaigners say they should be…

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Elizabeth Kolbert writes: For those inclined to see them, there were plenty of bad omens last week as the latest round of international climate negotiations—COP26—got under way in Glasgow. A storm that lashed England with eighty-mile-per-hour winds disrupted train service from London to Scotland, leaving many delegates scrambling to find a way to get to the meeting. Just as the conclave began, Glasgow’s garbage workers went on strike, and rubbish piled up in the streets. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in…

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The Guardian reports: The jubilation of the Paris climate agreement, where delegates from around the world triumphantly declared the climate crisis would finally be tamed, will have felt very hollow to many in the US in the six years since. Following the landmark 2015 deal to curb dangerous global heating, the US has experienced four of its five hottest years ever recorded. A drought of a severity unprecedented in modern civilization has tightened its grip upon the American west, parching…

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The New York Times reports: The week began with more than 130 presidents and prime ministers posing for a group photo in a century-old Baroque museum crafted from red sandstone. Fewer than 10 were women. Their median age, as their host at the climate summit, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, reminded them, was over 60. The week ended with boisterous protests of thousands on the streets of Glasgow. A march on Friday was led by young climate activists, some barely…

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Tina Gerhardt writes: Global emissions from fossil fuels have now rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. So it’s particularly significant that on Wednesday, at the UN climate conference COP26 in Glasgow, at least 25 countries agreed to end public subsidies for overseas oil and gas development and extraction starting at the end of 2022. China, Japan and South Korea, all heavily involved in funding fossil fuels abroad, have all signed on. In addition, more than 23 countries have committed to ending coal…

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The Guardian reports: People on almost every continent were gathering for marches and rallies on Saturday to mark a Global Day for Climate Justice, halfway through the Glasgow climate change summit. Activists in the Philippines, eight hours ahead of the UK, had already finished their rally as protesters gathered in Scotland. There were also rallies in South Korea, Indonesia, the Netherlands and France. The Belgian arm of Extinction Rebellion occupied a street in Brussels. The Scottish morning saw heavy rain,…

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The Guardian reports: JPMorgan Chase won glowing headlines last year when the global investment bank unveiled a commitment to counter the climate crisis. The press amplified JPMorgan’s message – sometimes in JPMorgan’s own words. Fortune published a commentary article trumpeting the bank’s plans to “tackle climate change”. Six paragraphs into the piece, the writers noted they worked for the investment firm. (They were actually its top executives.) The bank waited months to detail its plans. In May, it finally outlined…

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Maya Ozbayoglu writes :Young people know that our generation already disproportionately feels the effects of the climate crisis. Almost all of the intense heatwaves that have hit Europe since 1950 occurred during my lifetime. It’s likely they will only get worse. Unfortunately, Poland, where I live, has clung to an energy model driven by burning fossil fuels for too long. This irreversible destruction violates our right to life, health, property and values ​​of the natural world. That is why at…

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Quartz reports: COP26 is nominally about reducing carbon emissions, but in practice it’s largely about capital—namely moving more of it into clean energy and climate adaptation and away from fossil fuels. In the first two days of the UN’s COP26 climate summit, several rich countries promised to do this, pledging more climate finance to poorer countries: $10 billion from Japan, $7 billion from Italy, $260 million from Ireland. Scotland became the first country to officially take responsibility for “loss and…

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Bob Berwyn writes: It’s been more than 30 years since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change first warned the world that greenhouse gases were dangerously warming the global climate. Decades of United Nations climate negotiations followed, culminating in the 2015 Paris agreement. Yet, in that time, humans have pumped more carbon dioxide into the air than in the preceding 240 years. Since that first IPCC report in 1990, emissions have increased 60 percent and the average global temperature has climbed…

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