COP26 updates: Countries officially adopt Glasgow Climate Pact
Deep divisions still remained about the future of fossil fuels.
Leaders from nearly every country in the world have converged upon Glasgow, Scotland, for COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference that experts are touting as the most important environmental summit in history.
The conference, delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was designed as the check-in for the progress countries are making after entering the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, a value that would be disastrous to exceed, according to climate scientists. More ambitious efforts aim to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Not one country is going into COP26 on track to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to experts. They will need to work together to find collective solutions that will drastically cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.
"We need to move from commitments into action," Jim Harmon, chairman of the World Resources Institute, told ABC News. "The path to a better future is still possible, but time is running out."
All eyes will be on the biggest emitters: China, the U.S. and India. While China is responsible for about 26% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, more than all other developed countries combined, the cumulative emissions from the U.S. over the past century are likely twice that of China's, David Sandalow, a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, told ABC News.
Latest headlines:
- COP26 adopts Glasgow Climate Pact
- US, China announce joint statement addressing climate crisis
- America 'ready to take on the challenge,' Pelosi says
- Obama addresses COP26, endorses Biden’s 'Build Back Better' bill
- American agriculture is ready to tackle climate change, agriculture secretary says
- US needs to 'get in the game' on clean energy transitions, energy secretary say
- Biden, world leaders push to conserve global forests
Greta Thunberg leads youth activist march
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, 18, was among thousands of young people demonstrating outside of COP26.
Thunberg spoke at the Fridays for Future march, the group she founded in 2018, criticizing politicians and labeling the conference as a "failure."
"It should be obvious that we cannot solve a crisis with the same methods that got us into it in the first place," Thunberg said.
Many of the demonstrators who spoke to ABC News said they attended the rally to see Thunberg speak.
Some demonstrators said they did not trust their leaders to create real change but were encouraged to see how many other young people were fighting for climate action.
Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate, 24, also spoke at the protest, where she said Africa was experiencing some of the harshest effects from climate change.
Nakate said she envisions a future when "the world is green again."
-ABC News' Maggie Rulli
Despite positive momentum, 'job is not done,' John Kerry says
The sense of urgency at COP26 is at an all-time high but it’s too soon to declare victory, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry, said on Friday.
"Let me emphasize as strongly as I can: Job not done," Kerry told reporters at a news conference. "Job not done the day this ends."
The summit is “just the beginning” of a decade-long race to drastically cut emissions, Kerry said.
Countries cannot leave the conference and continue on as “business as usual,” he noted, adding, "I hope that will continue and translate into a goodwill that brings out a very strong decision at the end of next week."
-ABC News’ Stephanie Ebbs
US aims to 'dramatically' scale up carbon capture
The U.S. Department of Energy has announced a new goal to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and store it for less than less than $100 per metric ton.
The "Carbon Negative Shot" is the government’s first major effort in carbon dioxide removal, a key facet of its plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, according to the DOE.
"By slashing the costs and accelerating the deployment of carbon dioxide removal — a crucial clean energy technology — we can take massive amounts of carbon pollution directly from the air and combat the climate crisis," said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm
By midcentury, carbon dioxide removal will need to be deployed at the gigaton scale. One gigaton of subsurface sequestered carbon dioxide is the equivalent of approximately 250 million vehicles driven in one year.
The technology still requires significant investments in research and development, according to the DOE.
-ABC News' Stephanie Ebbs
American agriculture is ready to tackle climate change, agriculture secretary says
The Department of Agriculture is researching initiatives to invest in more climate-friendly alternatives to traditional agriculture, Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture, told ABC News.
"I was here in 2009 at Copenhagen, and at that point in time, American agriculture was not ready for this day," Vilsack told ABC News’ Maggie Rulli on Thursday. "Today they are, and that is a big difference and an important difference."
Vilsack said he understands why some farmers are reluctant to attribute changes in their land or trends in weather patterns to climate change because many are scraping to get by and can’t take on the cost of changing their operations.
But the Department of Agriculture hopes to take away some of that burden, Vilsack said.
"There’s a tremendous opportunity here for us to make a significant impact early in this process, and we're excited at USDA to be part of part of the solution instead of part of the problem," he said.
About 24% of emissions in the U.S. come from agriculture and land use, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
-ABC News’ Stephanie Ebbs