Tag Archives | United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26)

What does COP26 mean for the climate movement? simon hannah offers his assessment.

The balance sheet is clear: on paper, Glasgow clarifies the ambiguous Paris goal by making it more radical (1.5°C is now the target) and mentions the responsibility of fossil fuels; but in practice, the conference did not take any steps to stop the catastrophe.

Former Irish President Mary Robinson observed, “People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty,… nowhere near enough to avoid climate disaster.”

A gaping hole in the COP26 official agenda was the oversized role of the military industrial complex in environmental devastation. The US is a global leader on this front with the Pentagon being a bigger polluter than 140 countries combined.

COP26 reaffirmed what has been obvious from the beginning: the Northern colonial and capitalist states most responsible for creating the climate crisis are unwilling to place people before profits in order to address the planet’s looming ecological collapse and humanitarian catastrophe.

The organisers of COP26 designated themes for many of the days during the conference, such as energy, finance, and transport. There was no day set aside for a discussion of agriculture; instead, it was bundled into ‘Nature Day’ on 6 November, during which the main topic was deforestation.

Following two weeks of negotiations, the UN climate summit COP26 concluded with the Glasgow Climate Pact.

Has COP26, which has wound up in Glasgow after two weeks of political showboating and grassroots protest, been a failure?

Nothing useful seemed to emerge from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at COP26 this week. The leaders of developed countries made tired speeches about their commitment to reversing the climate catastrophe.

The popularity of “build back better” as a slogan reflects that no-one in their right mind would be overly enthused by the idea of “building back the same”.

Leaders at the COP26 summit have no intention of tackling the growing environmental impacts caused by their ‘defence’ spending.

Marxist economist Michael Roberts shares his take on the Glasgow climate talks—what is on and what is not on the agenda.

With COP26 just around the corner, a wave of industrial action in Scotland is demonstrating the huge opportunity of linking workers’ struggle with climate organising. Sara Bennett, Pete Cannell and Raymond Morrell argue that huge shifts in climate struggle are on the way, and that building these links will be essential to winning revolutionary change.

It is perhaps fitting that United States President Joe Biden arrived in Glasgow for the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) on the climate catastrophe with eighty-five cars in tow months after declaring ‘I’m a car guy’ (for details on the climate catastrophe, see our Red Alert no. 11, ‘Only One Earth’).

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR: Current climate mitigation plans will result in a catastrophic 2.7°C world temperature rise. US$1.6–3.8 trillion is needed annually to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5°C.

If Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were writing the Communist Manifesto today, it is not inconceivable that they would begin with the sentence: “A spectre is haunting humanity—the spectre of extinction.”

An anti-imperialist approach to global warming in the context of COP26.

Fortunately, the scientific data produced by the IPCC makes it possible to calculate the real changes which are required to combat climate change.

Discussions in the forthcoming COP26 should focus on democratisation of climate finance that enables procedural climate justice.

The latest IPCC report paints a picture of five potential futures for humanity. In the worst one, if corporations keep calling the shots, we could see catastrophic warming of up to 5.7˚C.