Why I hope Glasgow 2021 will not be another climate cop-out | Nikos Chircop

It’s been quite a weekend for the G20 member states’ delegations, many of whom have jet-setted from their national capitals to Rome for the G20, and now onwards to Scotland’s former industrial heartland. 

As the globe’s diplomatic armadas land in Glasgow for yet another two-week tussle to try save the planet from... well, ourselves, the question on many people’s lips seems to be: “Will it be worth the carbon miles? 

The reality is revealed in the conference’s very name: the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, shortened to COP26. It is the 26th attempt at finally reaching a turning point on the climate crisis. Yet is this really a case of 26th time’s the charm? If the G20 can act as a bellwether of what’s to come, as was hinted by Italian PM Mario Draghi during the summit, then the outcomes of COP26 seem to be just as nuanced as the outcomes of the G20. 

The weekend-long summit saw leaders paying no lack of lip service to climate as, according the G20 text obtained by Politico Europe, they committed to “take further action this decade to formulate, implement, update and enhance, where necessary, our 2030” contributions and to stick by the 1.5 centigrade goal. 

The result? They simultaneously failed to commit to concrete action. The Group of Twenty, much like the Group of Seven, has no plan to end coal production, and no plan to curb methane emissions. 

Another similarity between G20 and the current summit in Scotland is the lack of physical senior representation from two of the world’s most important stakeholders – gas-rich Russia and coal-happy China. Despite China being the largest renewable energy market in the world, it is also directly responsible for 50% of global emissions from coal, and as global, and Chinese, emissions continue to rise, Beijing stubbornly presses on with the construction of more coal-powered power plants. 

The developing world is also no model student; however, the fact remains that the only viable path to economic growth made available to the Global South remains one based on burning fossil fuels. If the Western World thinks it can cop out of its political duty to try its utmost to engage our strategic competitors in Beijing and Moscow on climate, its economic duty to finance the Global South’s carbon neutral development, and fundamentally, its moral duty to lead the charge to decarbonisation, it couldn’t be more grievously wrong. 

When it comes to the Climate Crisis, it truly is a case of failure not being an option – it is for this reason that the stakes are so high at the ongoing conference. 

We are truly completely reliant on whatever the world’s delegations to the conference manage to muster up during these faithful two weeks, yet alas many, including myself, remain cynical. Will this be yet another case of ‘blah, blah, blah’ as Greta Thunberg, and the multitude of climate activists behind her seem to suggest? 

I for one surely hope not when, as alluded to before, failure is not an option. The planet simply cannot afford another Paris, where despite all the trumpets blown in 2015, the parties copped out of actually making the Accords legally binding; the result of this conference being another six years of climate inaction. 

Even if COP26 really does finally result in concrete, legally binding action to reduce carbon emissions, the global citizenry – us – have a civic duty to maintain pressure on our policy-makers so as to ensure that they not only stick to the potential agreement but pressure their peers in the international arena to do the same, and to go as far as humanly possible domestically to ensuring the rapid and socially just decarbonisation of our economies. We’ve copped out long enough.

Nikos Chircop is a final-year International Relations student at the University of Malta