COP26 Negotiators Turn to Plan B as Climate Pledges Fall Short

November - December 2021

After a week of climate talks in Glasgow at the COP26 Summit, negotiators are grappling with a fundamental math problem: The commitments governments have collectively made to slash greenhouse gas emissions do not add up to what scientists think is needed to avoid the most destructive effects of global warming.

Addressing that shortcoming is one of the main tasks of the Summit’s second week. Negotiators from key governments including the United States and the European Union are no longer banking on a few big developing countries to come up with deeper cuts during the Summit itself, according to officials. Instead, they plan to spend the rest of the Conference negotiating how to push governments to make new, more ambitious pledges shortly.

Officials are now discussing ways to encourage governments to revisit their emissions plans more frequently than every five years, a schedule set by the Paris Climate Accord of 2015. That, they hope, could create a mechanism to embolden countries to continue reducing emissions more quickly.

The challenge is that most governments, including all the world’s major emitters, have recently updated their emissions plans and are expecting to spend the next few years passing them into law. The Biden Administration is already waging domestic political battles to adopt its proposals. Other governments such as China have just submitted updated plans under the Paris Accord after rebuffing pressure from the West to be more ambitious.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

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