COP26 updates: Countries officially adopt Glasgow Climate Pact

A coalition of 190 countries and organizations have agreed to commit to the end of coal power at COP26, a potentially major step toward limiting global temperature increases. 

Major coal-using countries such as Poland and Vietnam have committed to phasing out the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel for the first time, the U.K. government announced Wednesday night. 

The coalition has committed to ending all investment in new coal power generation both domestically and internationally, rapidly scale up deployment of clean power generation, phase out coal power for major economies in the 2030s and the rest of the world by the 2040s and make a transition away from coal power in a way that benefits workers and communities.

China, Japan and Korea, the three largest public financiers of goal, have already committed to ending overseas finance for goal generation by the end of 2021.

-ABC News’ Stephanie Ebbs

Carbon emissions are on track to return to pre-COVID levels after dropping by 5.4% in 2020, according to the 16th annual Global Carbon Budget prepared by the Global Carbon Project.

Researchers from University of Exeter, University of East Anglia, CICERO and Stanford University found that coal and gas emissions are set to grow more in 2021 than they fell in 2020.

While all major emitters – U.S., China, India and the EU27 – are seeing a rise in emissions by a minimum of 4% in 2021, India and China are set to beat their respective 2019 emission levels.

“Investments in the green economy in post-COVID recovery plans of some countries have been insufficient so far, on their own, to avoid a substantial return close to pre-COVID emissions,” study leader Pierre Friedlingstein, who holds a chair in Mathematical Modelling of the Climate System at the University of Exeter, said.

Looking ahead, Friedlingstein said, “To achieve net-zero by 2050, we must cut emissions every year by an amount comparable to that seen during COVID.”

Hollywood and fashion royalty met with actual royalty at COP26. 

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio and designer Stella McCartney were seen chatting with Britain’s Prince Charles at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Scotland, on Wednesday. 

Prince Charles was at the event to award the "Terra Carta Seal" to corporate leaders. The award recognizes companies that have documented plans to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2035 or achieve net-zero by 2050.

DiCaprio has long been an environmental activist, and McCartney strives to use sustainable materials for her fashion line. The garden at Highgrove House, Prince Charles’ home in Gloucestershire, England, was one of the first to reincorporate organic practices in the 1980s.

The Maldives, an archipelago made up of over 1,100 coral islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, is the lowest lying nation in the world. Therefore, sea level rise caused by global climate change is an existential threat to the island nation.

"Our islands are slowly being inundated by the sea, one by one," Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, the president of the Maldives, told the U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP26, earlier this week. "If we do not reverse this trend, the Maldives will cease to exist by the end of this century."

At the current rate of global warming, almost 80% of the Maldives could become uninhabitable by 2050, according to multiple reports from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey.

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