Cop26 in Glasgow: Halfway to a halfway house on climate change

The United Nations climate summit in Glasgow is at the midpoint of its fortnight of detailed negotiations – the part that matters and is supposed to translate the fine words of the leaders who opened the conference into binding commitments to change.

We are halfway through a summit that appears to be likely to make it halfway to where the world needed it to be. As a young, optimistic news organisation, The Independent would prefer to emphasise the half of the glass that is full, but as one that has always championed green sustainability, we have to be blunt about how far this summit is falling short of the hopes once invested in it.

We would not go so far as Greta Thunberg, the Swedish activist, who called it “a global north greenwash festival”. There is a danger in such language that it will discourage and demotivate the radical spirit needed to press for change. But we need to be realistic about the limits to what can be achieved over the final week of this summit.

Without the wholehearted engagement of the Chinese and Indian governments, it was never going to be possible to secure credible plans to cut climate-changing emissions as quickly as they need to be. Indeed, even with the welcome change in the White House, it was always going to be difficult to get significant measures through the US Congress.

Thus, many of the UK government’s claims for the progress made in Glasgow so far are less impressive than they seem. The prime minister claims: “New commitments to net zero by the middle of the century mean 90 per cent of the world economy is covered, triple the figure when the UK took on the Cop presidency.” Unfortunately, “the middle of the century” is a flexible concept, stretching to 2060 in the case of China and 2070 for India.

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However, important agreements have been reached on reforestation, sustainable farming and protecting our oceans, and there is still a great deal of hard work to be done by negotiating teams at the summit to agree the 200-page text. Boris Johnson seems to think that enough progress will be made to allow him to return from Glasgow next weekend to declare the summit a success.

It will not be, but it will not be a failure either. Minimising climate change is a huge and complex whole world task that can only ever be one long arduous negotiation. It will never be enough, and it will never be finished, but it can be done. That is why we salute all the people making their voices heard on the streets of Glasgow, London, Bristol and cities around the world. That is why we urge you, the reader, to sign The Independent’s petition calling on world leaders to make that extra effort to make a difference.

Let us keep up the momentum to secure the best deal possible in Glasgow next weekend, and then to hold world leaders to their promises and to press them to improve upon them.