Oct. 31 marked the first day of the 13-day-long conference commonly known as COP 26. Meeting once a year, nations from across the world come together to discuss global climate issues, although due to COVID, this conference has not occurred since 2019. These “conference[s] of the parties,” or COPs, are settings for world leaders to partake in negotiations on what climate actions to which they will collectively commit.
This year, 196 countries are attending. It is important to note that while these meetings occur every year, work must be done after them, as opposed to merely performative meetings used to raise world leaders’ approval ratings. The next decade leading up to 2030, is the most crucial time for climate prevention strategies to become implemented. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that to prevent the worst damage, we must reduce emissions and bring the atmospheric temperature down to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030 — if we do not, there is very little hope of reversing the damage of climate change. This year more than ever, the negotiations coming out of COP 26 will tell us if it is possible to curb the climate crisis.
The last major climate agreement was in 2015, where the Paris Agreement was drafted. Today, this agreement is the most aggressive to date, as it set long-term goals for climate; the largest of these goals is to keep the atmospheric temperature below two degrees Celsius and commit to a goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Countries promised to take measures such as cut back on fossil fuels, invest in renewable energy sources and provide assistance to developing countries — but they did truly not act. This is not to say that these steps were not taken at all, but they were not implemented to the extent that the countries promised and that they needed to adhere to meet their goals for reducing global temperatures.
This year’s COP has world leaders willing to take large pledges. Over 100 countries have agreed to halt deforestation in the next decade, South American countries proposed to create a marine highway for endangered species and many countries have promised to curb emissions of methane. The European Union, as well as other major contributing countries including the U.S., pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. However, as we saw with the Paris Agreement, these ideas need to become implemented now. According to the International Energy Agency, for counties to achieve net-zero by 2050, electric cars would need to make up more than half of new car sales, countries would need to shut down all fossil fuel plants and air travel would need to be vastly reduced. These examples are not small undertakings, they require mass amounts of infrastructure and money, as well as aggressive policy-making. Policies made at COP 26 also need to be implemented faster. The pact on deforestation still allows for another decade of foresting and it is not even binding. In addition, despite 150 countries pledging to reduce methane emissions, this pledge is only to reduce these by 30% and large producers such as China and India have not signed it at all. These policies are important and set us on the right track, but we need short-term regulations to jumpstart these broad ideas.
