The world’s failure to act seriously on cutting greenhouse gas emissions means meeting its 1.5°C climate change goal is implausible, according to two scientists calling for more honesty about the path Earth is headed for.

In a review of global action on climate change, including pledges at last year’s COP26 summit, and at Concordia University, Canada, said social, political and technological inertia meant the Paris Agreement’s temperature target was likely to be missed.

“It’s a call for honesty and action. Given the direction we are going right now, there is no prospect of coming close to 1.5°C,” says Matthews. Global emissions need to fall 43 per cent by 2030 to have a good chance of meeting the target, but have been steadily marching upwards for decades.

The study follows recent research showing there is now an almost 50-50 chance of temporarily exceeding the goal within five years. Other analysis has shown there is a high chance of breaching it long-term, even in the unrealistic event of global emissions stopping overnight.

However, Matthews says while political and corporate efforts to cut emissions are falling short of what is needed, there have been signs of progress. The world is now on course to warm by between 2.5°C and 3°C by the end of the century, he says, not the 4°C to 5°C that was feared around a decade ago. “We have made progress, there are options, but we haven’t really embraced those options at the level [needed],” he says.

Car-free days in cities, revised motorway speed limits and cutting business air travel offer ways to reduce emissions immediately, Matthews and Wynes suggest. Such quick wins will need to be accompanied by major changes such as decarbonising energy grids and widespread adoption of electric cars and heat pumps, alongside behaviour changes including dietary shifts, they add.

The pair estimate the world’s remaining “carbon budget” for 1.5°C – the amount the world can emit before the goal is beyond reach – to be 360 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, or about nine years of current annual emissions. “If we’re actually serious about the 1.5°C window, we have to try harder,” says Matthews.

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JUST days after it was agreed on by nearly 200 countries at the COP26 summit in November, the reverberations of the Glasgow Climate Pact were being felt.

In the immediate aftermath of the conference, the price of carbon in the European Union’s carbon market hit a record high of €66 a tonne. Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon came out against a new North Sea oil field, putting more pressure on the UK government to reconsider its approval. The European Commission set out a draft law to block imports of beef and other commodities if they are linked to deforestation.

Yet it will take a while for the Glasgow Climate Pact’s eye-catching promise to “phase-down” coal to be fully adopted. For example, in October, China’s coal output hit the highest level since March 2015.

It may take even longer for the effects of the pact’s pledge to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” to be felt, judging by the G7’s slow progress on a past commitment to end them.

The achievements of the deal reached in Glasgow, UK, will play out over decades to come. Next year will be the first big test. By the end of 2022, countries are meant to deliver on COP26’s “request” – diplomatic language that amounts to a commitment – to issue better 2030 emissions reduction plans.

“It will take a while for the Glasgow Climate Pact’s promise to ‘phase-down’ coal to be fully adopted”

Those plans must be aligned with the 2015 Paris Agreement’s goals of holding global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and well below 2°C. Current plans by Australia, Brazil and Indonesia are among those rated “highly insufficient” and in line with a 4°C future by independent analysts. Countries that have already set a stretching target, such as the UK’s plan of a 68 per cent emissions cut by 2030, aren’t expected to upgrade their ambitions.

India announced new goals at COP26, including sourcing half of its electricity from renewables by 2030, and will be expected to submit them in a formal plan to the UN. Officially, it should have done that by the end of 2020.

One issue that lower-income countries will watch closely in 2022 is whether higher-income nations are on track to deliver the $100 billion a year of climate finance they had promised by 2020 and that they expressed “deep regret” at missing. The figure is now expected to be hit in 2023, though US climate envoy John Kerry said in Glasgow that he thinks it may be met earlier.

COP26 resolved outstanding rules of the Paris Agreement on transparency, time frames for emissions targets and a new global carbon market, which will now take years to be established. Eyes will also turn to the formation of a new independent group, announced by UN secretary general AntÓnio Guterres at the summit, to scrutinise net-zero pledges by the private sector.

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The long read

CLIMATE talks are arenas of high emotion because, fundamentally, they are about life, death, money, family and people’s homes. I saw this emotion in the bleary eyes of the sleep-deprived negotiators at COP26 and heard it in the chants of protesters outside the summit’s venue each morning.

Whether they were activists, negotiators or ministers, most of the people I met in Glasgow were steadfast, hard-working and resolutely uncynical. “It’s two weeks away from your family, from your friends, eating very bad food and not sleeping,” says Kristin Qui, a negotiator for Trinidad and Tobago. The day before, 11 November, she had started work at 8am and finished negotiations at 10pm. “That was an early finish,” she says.

“There’s a lot of rhetoric about the science, but some just want to erase any references to it”

Qui was negotiating at the summit on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States, a coalition of 39 countries, largely from the Caribbean and South Pacific, including Jamaica, Tuvalu, and Antigua and Barbuda. On 8 November, Tuvalu released a recorded message from foreign minister Simon Kofe, delivered knee-deep in the sea at Funafuti, to remind the summit of the impacts of climate change.

For those attending COP26 in person, “negotiations are not only physically exhausting but emotionally exhausting too”, says Qui. “But you have to compartmentalise, because if you engage with that exhaustion your body is going to be like: I can’t do this any more.”

Climate negotiations comprise public meetings and private talks. In public meetings, countries say which parts of the proposed climate deal they do and don’t like. “It’s where the theatrics happen,” says Qui. “But the real discussions happen in informal meetings where there are no facilitators.”

“There’s a lot of rhetoric from leaders about the importance of [the target to limit global warming to] 1.5 degrees and the importance of science,” says Frances Fuller, a negotiator for Antigua and Barbuda. “But then when you get down to some of the technical discussions… there are other parties in the room that just want to erase any references to any foundation of real science.”

It takes effort to stay calm. “Here I have a job to do and if I were to go into hysterics right now nobody would listen to me,” says Qui. This is harder to do at home, she says: “When you see that not enough is being done – you can’t compartmentalise.”

Arafat Jamal, who works for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, tells me that not enough money is given to lower-income nations to protect them against the worst effects of climate change that are happening right now – about 780,000 Sudanese people have been affected by flooding caused by heavy rain this year alone, for example.

Floods aren’t new to Sudan, but they are becoming more frequent and intense, causing a loss of homes, food and livelihoods. “There are 16 million cows in the country,” says Jamal. “But they are not equipped to deal with mud. They just stand there and stay stuck.”

Last year, higher-income countries gave about $20 billion to lower-income nations to help them adapt to the effects of climate change. In Glasgow, they promised to double this annual figure by 2025, but many poorer countries at COP26 said this simply isn’t good enough.

Many people were frustrated with the summit’s inability to bring about more radical action. But COP26 wasn’t the only show in town. For the second week of November, Glasgow was also home to an alternative meeting: the People’s Summit, a gathering of activists and campaigners who shared their experiences of pushing for change.

One evening, Clara Ramos, a lawyer from Brazil who is part of the Parents for Future environmental movement, gave a talk on the legal action she is taking against São Paulo’s state government over air pollution. “I have two sons,” she said during her presentation. “Will their survival be harder than mine?”

Ramos says her legal case will take 10 to 20 years, but that she is confident of eventual victory.

I found her determination, along with that of Qui, Fuller and Jamal, both resolute and contagious. COP26 was at times disheartening and nearly always overwhelming. But those disappointed with the summit’s outcome should take hope from the huge amount of work that took place – and is still happening – behind the scenes.

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“In a last, unexpected twist, India intervened to weaken pledges over ending coal use”

Nearly 200 countries have made an unprecedented and historic pledge at the COP26 climate summit to speed up the end of fossil fuel subsidies and reduce the use of coal, after India pushed through an 11th hour intervention to weaken the language on coal.

Crucially, despite almost a fortnight’s negotiations that ran more than 24 hours late, the 196 countries meeting in Glasgow, UK, to issuing stronger 2030 climate plans next year in a bid to avert dangerous global warming.

Pledges at COP26 are expected to see Earth warm 2.4°C this century, better than the predicted 2.7°C predicted before the summit but still a rise that would bring extreme climate impacts and see countries overshoot their shared goals of 1.5°C and “well below” 2°C.

The promise to “revisit and strengthen” new plans by the end of 2022 means the UK government hosting the summit can credibly claim to have delivered its aim of “keeping alive” the 1.5°C target. “It is a big moment,” says Chris Stark from the , an independent group that advises the UK government.

Fresh plans submitted next year for curbing emissions in 2030 must be aligned with the 1.5°C goal, an important new requirement that means those governments that fall short will have to justify why to their citizens. Australia, Brazil and Indonesia are among many countries whose existing plans are inadequate and will need to be strengthened.

Until today, coal and fossil fuel subsidies have never been explicitly mentioned in 26 years of treaties and decisions at UN climate talks, despite coal being one of the key drivers of global warming and .

The language in COP26’s final decision text, now known as the Glasgow Climate Pact, sees countries agree to “accelerating efforts” on the phase-out of “inefficient” subsidies. In a dramatic last-minute intervention, minutes before the outcome was adopted, India proposed a watered-down version of the language on coal, changing to “phasing down” of coal rather than “phasing out.”

Despite several countries expressing anger at the last-ditch move, the weaker text was officially adopted. COP26 president Alok Sharma said he was “deeply sorry” for the way the final minutes unfolded, and was visibly emotional.�� The decision covers “unabated” coal, meaning coal could still be used when combined with carbon capture and storage.

The commitments made in Glasgow will disappoint many climate campaigners for falling short of putting the world on course to almost halve emissions by 2030, .

Experts said it was nonetheless a good outcome for one summit and a case of expectations being too high. “It’s not enough. But this is a process. I would have loved Glasgow to have fixed the problem, but it won’t and it was never going to,” says Stark. A path to a 1.5°C future is now “hanging by a thread” but “is still there, which is amazing”, he adds.

Michael Jacobs at the University of Sheffield, UK, who was previously an adviser to former UK prime minister Gordon Brown, says the most countries could achieve at COP26 was to admit their 2030 plans weren’t good enough and agree to return next year with better ones aligned to a 1.5°C trajectory. “They’ve done that,” he says.

Money cast a big shadow over the summit, after it that high-income countries wouldn’t deliver their promise of $100 billion of finance a year to lower-income countries until 2023, three years late. Countries expressed their “deep regret” that only about , a quarter of which was for adapting to climate change. They also agreed to hash out a new plan in the next three years for what a future climate finance goal looks like beyond 2025.

Adaptation was a key issue that rose up the agenda at Glasgow, after being largely overshadowed by emissions cuts at past UN climate summits. This time, high-income countries agreed that by 2025 they must double adaptation finance to about $40 billion a year. And nations agreed to work out a new global adaptation goal in future talks.

The conference stopped short of accepting a proposal by a group of 77 developing countries and China, which called for a new fund for the highly charged issue of “loss and damage”. That would have been the first step to some form of financial compensation from higher-income to lower-income countries for extreme weather and other climate impacts such as rising sea levels. However, nations promised to continue talking about funding for “loss and damage associated with the adverse impacts of climate change”.

Countries also reached agreement on technical but important rules on the Paris Agreement that have proved intractable in the six years since the world’s first comprehensive global climate treaty was agreed. Chief among those are the rules governing a new global carbon market under “Article 6” of the Paris accord, paving the way for a successor to a past scheme called the UN Clean Development Mechanism.

Other outstanding items in the “Paris rulebook” were ironed out, including “common timeframes” for when countries issue new carbon targets. That will be every five years for a new target 10 years later, so 2025 for 2035, and so on. Transparency rules over reporting of emissions cuts were resolved too.

The final decisions were gavelled through by COP26 president Alok Sharma this evening after almost a fortnight of talks in Glasgow. That official approval followed 3 hours of many countries’ delegates listing their mixed feelings about the final deal: “it’s not perfect… but it does represent real progress”, said Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands. Negotiators had worked overnight for several days in a row.

Earlier in the summit, countries struck a series of voluntary side deals on halting deforestation, stopping international financing for coal, blocking new oil and gas projects and curbing methane, a short-lived but powerful greenhouse gas.

The conference was attended at the outset by 120 world leaders, including US president Joe Biden and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who announced that India would hit net-zero emissions by 2070. Several other countries, including Australia and Saudi Arabia, also declared long-term net-zero goals on the eve of COP26, meaning about 90 per cent of world emissions are now covered by a net-zero target. “The shift in the long-term outlook has been utterly dramatic,” says Stark.

Countries agreed that next year’s UN climate summit will be held in Egypt.

Climate summits are long, complex and emotionally taxing. But for negotiators hailing from the island states facing the worst impacts of climate change right now, these talks are critical to the daily lives of everyone they love.

“It’s two weeks away from your family, from your friends, eating very bad food and not sleeping,” says , on the final Friday of negotiations at the COP26 climate summit.

On Thursday she started work at 8am and finished negotiations at 10pm. “That was an early finish,” she says. For the past two weeks she says she has averaged about 6 hours of sleep per night.

Qui is negotiating on behalf of the . It is a coalition of 39 countries, largely from the Caribbean and South Pacific, including Jamaica, Cuba, Fiji and Antigua and Barbuda.

“We are a group of very small countries that don’t have a significant amount of political leverage,” says , a negotiator for Antigua and Barbuda. “But we have strength in numbers and the moral high ground – though that’s sometimes not enough to move the needle.”

“Negotiations are not only physically exhausting but emotionally exhausting too,” says Qui. “But you have to compartmentalise, because if you engage with that exhaustion your body is going to be like: I can’t do this anymore.”

Climate negotiations comprise both public meetings and private talks. In public meetings, countries say which parts of the proposed climate deal they do and don’t like. “It’s where the theatrics happen,” says Qui.

Meanwhile, smaller, closed-door meetings revolve around specific topics, such as climate finance and emission pledges, and are moderated by facilitators. Qui, for example, has spent COP26 negotiating Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which details how carbon markets will work.

“But the real discussions happen in informal meetings where there are no facilitators,” she says.

These often happen late at night, says Qui. Fuller says that on Thursday night she had to search out a South African negotiator through the conference centre so they could have one final discussion about emission-cutting measures.

“There’s a lot of rhetoric from leaders about the importance of 1.5 degrees and the importance of science,” says Fuller. “But then when you get down to some of the technical discussions… there are other parties in the room that just want to erase any references to any foundation of real science.”

It takes effort to stay calm. “Here I have a job to do and if I were to go into hysterics right now nobody would listen to me,” says Qui. This is harder to do at home, she says: “When you see that not enough is being done – you can’t compartmentalise.”

is Jamaica’s environment minister and one of the co-facilitators of the negotiations. Much like Qui and Fuller, he says he has a job to do. “I don’t have time to be worried about who doesn’t get it [the severity of climate change],” he says. “I have to be concentrating and ensuring they get it before we leave.”

“If these negotiations weren’t difficult we wouldn’t need two weeks,” he adds. “I didn’t come here with an expectation of having some kind of grand nice affair… we are pushing every second for a COP that is successful so that all our children and all of our grandchildren… will look on what we did here and see that we saved them and not that we failed them.”

Although COP26 was due to finish yesterday, the summit’s was released this morning and it is hoped that the final pact will be published later today.