Cop26 Glasgow — news: New climate pledges meet only one-seventh of needed carbon cuts as Thunberg to march

While the COP26 summit is already taking place after a gap of one year, the pandemic restrictions are still affecting the attendance of many countries, especially the ones more vulnerable to climate change.

Border closures, quarantine rules and high travel costs will see small island states and poorer nations sending smaller delegations, with some leaders unable to travel to the summit starting in Scotland on Sunday.

Click here to know which countries will be affected due to the restrictions:

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The Queen will not be attending the Cop26 climate summit, Buckingham Palace has confirmed.

The 95-year-old monarch, who spent a night in hospital last week, was supposed to travel to Glasgow for an engagement on 1 November.

A Palace spokesperson said: “Her Majesty has regretfully decided that she will no longer travel to Glasgow to attend the evening reception of Cop26 on Monday, 1st November.

“Her Majesty is disappointed not to attend the reception but will deliver an address to the assembled delegates via a recorded video message.”

The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (Cop26) will finally commence in Glasgow, Scotland, at the end of October, a year after it was delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hosted by the UK under the presidency of former business secretary Alok Sharma and in partnership with Italy, the summit at the city’s SEC Centre will bring together the biggest gathering of world leaders ever assembled on British soil over the course of its 12-day run from Sunday 31 October to Friday 12 November.

While the importance of the summit has been heavily hyped and expectation is high that a generation-defining agreement will be signed to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and put the brake on the pace of global heating in line with the goals of the 2015 Paris accord, there is currently a good deal of uncertainty surrounding precisely who will be attending.

Without the enthusiastic cooperation of the influential leaders of some of the planet’s biggest polluting nations, anything agreed at Cop26 will ring decidedly hollow.

The worst blow to Boris Johnson’s ambitions for the gathering so far has been the Kremlin’s announcement that Russian president Vladimir Putin will not be attending.

But perhaps the greatest concern of all though is whether Chinese premier Xi Jinping will fly into Glasgow.

Remember Cop25? If so, it’s probably not for the right reasons. The last UN climate summit, held in Madrid in 2019, was characterised by squabbles among major polluting nations and ultimately a disappointing lack of action.

Now on the cusp of Cop26 in Glasgow – postponed for a year due the Covid pandemic – there is an even narrower window to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, designed to curb even greater climate extremes.

The Independent’s senior climate correspondent Louis Boyle reports.

EU green policy chief Frans Timmermans will meet China’s top climate envoy Xie Zhenhua face-to-face for the first time on Wednesday ahead of the Cop26 summit.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is not expected to attend the climate talks and some campaigners are concerned that the world’s biggest CO2 producer does not plan on unveiling a new pledge at the United Nations event in Scotland.

But while Xi has not travelled outside China since before the pandemic, he has made three major climate announcements on the international stage, including a pledge at last month’s UN general assembly to stop funding coal plants abroad.

At their meeting scheduled to take place in London on Wednesday, Xie and Timmermans will “go through the latest developments and see where we all stand in these last few days before the Cop26 officially begins,” an EU official said.

The 27 countries of the EU were among 143 to increase their climate pledges this year, out of the nearly 200 that signed the Paris accord. The EU has committed, in law, to cut net emissions at least 55% from 1990 levels by 2030 and hit net zero by 2050.

China is among the major emitters that has yet to submit a new climate target. It has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2060 and stop increasing its emissions before 2030, although it has not pinned down a date by which its emissions will peak.

Additional reporting by Reuters

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has lamented a “leadership gap” ahead of Cop26 climate talks and said that plans by countries to cut emissions over the next decade left the world on track for a “catastrophic global temperature rise” of 2.7C.

Even with new announcements in the last few days from countries pledging net zero targets ahead of Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, the world would still see more than 2C of long-term warming, he said.

“We know that humanity’s future depends on keeping global temperature increase to 1.5C by 2030,” he told a press conference on a UN report on the “emissions gap” between action needed to limit temperature rises to globally-agreed goals under the Paris Agreement and what countries have pledged.

“We also know that, so far, parties to the Paris Agreement are utterly failing to keep this target within reach.”

He warned: “The clock is ticking. The emissions gap is the result of a leadership gap.

“But leaders can still make this a turning point to a greener future instead of a tipping point to climate catastrophe.

“The era of half measures and hollow promises must end. The time for closing the leadership gap must begin in Glasgow.”

Additional reporting by PA

Transport minister Graeme Dey should resign if rail strikes go ahead during Cop26, the Scottish Lib Dems have said.

The RMT union is the final holdout in the action, which is set to disrupt the historic summit coming to Glasgow in less than a week.

Up to 30,000 people will descend on Scotland’s largest city over a two-week period and the strikes would hinder their ability to commute to and from the conference hall.

Mr Dey said on Tuesday he was “not optimistic” of a resolution by the deadline, set for 5pm on Wednesday.

But union leaders described the offer as “pitiful”, claiming it came with conditions that could cost jobs.

Lib Dem transport spokeswoman Jill Reilly said: “We are talking about delegates from around the world being unable to attend the most important climate summit of all time.

“Hotels in Edinburgh and elsewhere are booked out for this conference but their guests are unsure if they will even be able to reach the venue.

“The travelling public have now had six months of reduced services on the railways, it’s not like this has come out of the blue.”

Ms Reilly went on to point to the resignation of former transport secretary Stewart Stevenson, after a failure to prepare for snow disrupted roads.

“A rail shutdown would be a failure of equal magnitude. If the trains don’t run smoothly and on time for the duration of Cop26, then Graeme Dey should resign.

“The eyes of the world will soon be on Scotland. Ministers need to stop grandstanding and hammer out a deal that gets the trains running.”

People are switching to electric cars, not because governments tell them to, but because they want to buy them, writes Hamish McRae.

President Joe Biden will be “on track” to deliver on his promise to make the US a leader in fighting climate change when he arrives in Glasgow for the 26^th United Nations Climate Change Conference, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday.