Cop26: Extinction Rebellion starts 24-hour vigil outside JP Morgan – day eight as it happened
UK’s chief science adviser says lifestyle changes needed to have chance of 1.5C
Today at Cop26
Oliver Holmes
Good evening,
It’s night time now in Glasgow, and we’re going to close the blog shortly. The conference is well on its way to the final stretch.
Here are today’s main events:
The world’s most respected climate analysis coalition, the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), announced that temperature rises will top a disastrous 2.4C by the end of this century, based on the short-term goals countries have set out at Cop26.
The UK Met Office warned that 1 billion people will be affected by extreme heat stress if the climate crisis raises the global temperature by just 2C. That includes heating to the point that the human body cannot cool itself by sweating and even healthy people sitting in the shade will die within six hours.
All four UK health secretaries pledged to build climate-resilient health services, alongside 46 other countries making similar commitments. Health services are currently a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 4.6% of the worldwide total.
Canadian and British scientist advisers said substantial changes in behaviour are needed to tackle the climate emergency. Canada’s chief scientific adviser, Mona Nemer, said there would need to be a “profound behavioural and cultural change in terms of our relation to the Earth”.
Cop26 delegates expressed unease about the lack of progress made in discussions with only four days to go before the official end of the conference. “Everything is still to play for but there’s a long way to go,” said Tracy Carty, climate change policy and advocacy lead at Oxfam.
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Oliver Holmes
Some neat art installations and designs at Cop (and around the UK) this year.
The Dezeen architecture, interiors and design magazine has reported on the “Sinking House” in Bath, which takes inspiration from Monopoly.
Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hailed Joe Biden’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis, but said the US has “to deliver to get credit on climate change”.
Extinction Rebellion Scotland activists have set up a 24-hour vigil outside JP Morgan Chase – the bank which invests more money in fossil fuels than any other in the world.
Dezeen explains:
“Sinking House is a 5.5-metre by 3.5-metre bright red timber sculpture designed in a universally recognisable shape that takes cues from classic Monopoly houses.”
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Damian Carrington
“The world as designed by men has destroyed many things,” Cop26 delegates have been told, as leaders and campaigners warned that the climate crisis could not be ended without the empowerment of women.
Women and girls around the world suffer disproportionately from the impacts of climate breakdown, as they are on average poorer, less educated and more dependent on subsistence farming. A UN report found 80% of those displaced by the climate emergency are women.
The focus on gender equality on Tuesday saw indigenous women and politicians including Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives, demand increased investment.
Angelica Ponce, executive director of the Plurinational Authority for Mother Earth in Bolivia, said: “The world as designed by men has destroyed many things. The world should begin thinking like women. If it was designed by a woman, it would end violence against women and children.
“We want to be in the corridors of power and take part in decisions at international level to end this struggle of climate justice,” she said. “As indigenous women, we live day-by-day the cruel reality of climate change in our land.”
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Oliver Holmes
Meanwhile, somebody has graffitied “blood money” on another bank in Glasgow, according to a Glasgow Times reporter.
Extinction Rebellion starts 24-hour vigil outside JP Morgan Chase
Jessica Murray
Activists from Extinction Rebellion Scotland have just started a 24-hour vigil outside JP Morgan Chase – the bank which invests more money in fossil fuels than any other in the world.
“Just last month, [JP Morgan Chase] said they’re going to continue in fossil fuels,” said protester Gary Jack, 60, a part-time crofter who travelled down to the city from north of Inverness. “And the reasoning behind that was, they can use the profit to invest in renewables. So their logic is, make the problem worse to gain more money to try and make it better – which is bonkers.”
The activists said they have been visiting the Glasgow branch every day since the start of Cop26 and metal fences had already been put up outside the entrance before they got there. “I think it’s an admission of guilt, that they have to barricade themselves in,” Jack said.
He added that police had also been positioned outside the bank every night: “That’s taxpayers’ money funding the police to protect the baddest bank in the world.”
He said the with UN climate change conference being in the city, Scottish environmental activists were keen to make the most of the global spotlight being on them.
“This is it. We’re not going to travel halfway around the world for the next Cop, and this is the one that needs to make the big decisions. There’s a fork in the road here. So we’re going to do everything we can and that’s why I’m here every day.”
JPMorgan Chase launched a “Paris-aligned financing strategy” last year, pledging to set intermediate emission targets for 2030 for its financing portfolio
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Oliver Holmes
A reminder: It’s Gender Day today at Cop26.
And with that, the UK government pledged to fund £165m to help “progress gender equality while tackling climate change”.
WaterAid, a charity working on supplying clean water and decent toilets, has lauded the announcement but said it is not enough.
Kathryn Pharr, Senior Policy Advisor on International Climate Action, WaterAid, said:
While we welcome the UK government’s pledge, sadly it is just a drop in the ocean of funding needed to support the millions of women and girls across the globe who are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.
More severe floods and droughts will only increase this injustice as women and girls are forced to walk further to collect water for their households, miss out on going to school, getting jobs and fulfilling their potential.
This announcement needs to be an urgent rallying cry to other governments to follow suit and truly equip women and girls to be leaders in the fight against climate change, rather than victims, and to put gender equality at the heart of climate action.
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Oliver Holmes
Maybe that was too easy a test for liveblog readers.
Cop-watchers will know that, over the years, there have been several Cop presidents who are women. In fact, the president of the last summit, Cop25, was a woman: Chile’s Carolina Schmidt.
BUT there are big gaps in diversity and inclusiveness at Cop, not just this year but all years.
Last year, a campaign was launched to address that. Called SHEChangesClimate, its goal is to ensure “all delegations, for all climate negotiations, have at least a 50% representation of diverse women at their top levels”.
You can read more about the campaign here.
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Oliver Holmes
A little test for people who have closely watched Cop over the years.
We’ve been getting a lot of press releases here at the Guardian during Cop26. One just landed in a colleague’s inbox that caught her eye. To save the marketing agency embarrassment, I won’t mention who sent it, but have a read of the below and try to guess what might be wrong:
“Leading voices from the business world have joined with environmental and social activists, scientists and politicians to urge that the president of Cop27 is a woman. If successful, this would be the first woman president in Cop history.”
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Severin Carrell
Only a tiny fraction of Cop26 delegates have tested positive for Covid-19, largely due to the “exceptional” measures taken to limit infections, the Scottish government has said.
John Swinney, the deputy first minister, told MSPs on Tuesday only 0.1% of delegates with passes for the summit’s ‘blue zone’ tested positive by Friday last week, a period covering the first week of the event. He said a full update would follow when the summit ends.
Delegates have to complete and register daily lateral flow tests; produce evidence of their tests results; show vaccination certificates and observe distancing at events. Those measures led to many of the lengthy queues and delays getting into the conference zone last week.
Swinney said the event, which could lead to Covid infection rates spiking again, was being monitored very closely.
“Covid-19 has presented significant challenges to staging this unique event. The scale and worldwide draw of Cop26 poses risk of spread of Covid-19 both within delegates and to or from the local population of Scotland and the UK.
“A comprehensive and exceptional package of mitigation measures has been in place to ensure the event is delivered safely, helping to protect the welfare of everyone involved and the wider community.”
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Oliver Holmes
The speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has just been (you guessed it) speaking at an event attended by the press and US congresspeople.
“This is all about the children,” she says. “Leaving a world where they can be healthy, more secure, and more in reach of their fulfilment.”
We have a live feed above.
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Libby Brooks
It’s a glorious sunny afternoon outside the summit venue as the band strikes up for an impromptu ceilidh (Scottish or Irish social gathering) organised by Extinction Rebellion Scotland.
The ever-patient caller takes the international crowd through the steps to the Gay Gordons dance just as the Welsh Kitchen, which appears at XR events across the city, sets up. Today it’s cottage pie on the menu.
US must ‘deliver to get credit’ on climate crisis, says Ocasio-Cortez
Oliver Milman
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Congresswoman, has warned that the US “has not recovered our moral authority” following the Donald Trump years.
Speaking at a sideline event at Cop, Ocasio-Cortez was among a group of Democrats who hailed Joe Biden’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis. But while she said America “is back” in the climate conversation, the Congresswoman said this needs to be matched by actions.
“We have to deliver to get credit on climate change, it’s as simple as that,” she said.
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Severin Carrell
(Stepping away from the press conference, which just ended, a bit of political drama from our Scotland editor, Severin Carrell)
The Greens leader of Brighton and Hove city council has apologised for “a major failure of judgment” after flying from London to Glasgow, where he lambasted the UK government for ineffective action on climate change at the Cop26 summit.
Phelim MacCafferty, who also co-chairs the council’s carbon neutrality working group, admitted he took the flight instead of going by train on Friday, arguing he was worried about warnings that rail travellers faced delays that day.
The next day, MacCafferty represented Brighton and Hove at an event to present the Glasgow declaration on climate, attended by Greta Thunberg, and was at the mass march through the city on Saturday. Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, travelled to Glasgow by train.
He had been challenged about his travel by the Brighton Argus, a local paper. “This decision to fly was a major failure of my judgment which goes against my political group’s pledges and principles and I unreservedly apologise,” he told the paper.
“I reluctantly took this very difficult decision because I was concerned about the unreliability of the rail network following the well-publicised difficulties experienced by many people wanting to travel by train to Glasgow the week before, when trains were cancelled.
“I was concerned that this would happen again and I felt it was important not to miss the opportunity to attend the important presentation on behalf of the city, lobby world leaders and share with others the innovative work taking place in Brighton and Hove.”
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Here is the key quote from the CAT press conference (live in the video above) from Bill Hare, the chief executive of Climate Analytics:
Glasgow was meant to keep the Paris agreement’s 1.5 degree limit in sight, but the 2030 emissions gap is still so huge that we can’t really see that being possible at present.
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Oliver Holmes
Scientists have warned that beyond 1.5C, some of the damage to the earth’s climate will become irreversible.
The CAT analysts also found a chasm between what countries have said they will do on greenhouse gas emissions and their plans in reality. If current policies and measures are taken into account, rather than just goals, heating would rise to 2.7C, based on the CAT analysis.
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Oliver Holmes
This might come as a shock to avid readers. That is because just last week, other organisations published more optimistic forecasts of 1.9C or 1.8C.
However, those estimates were based on long-term goals set out by countries including India, the world’s third-biggest emitter, which is aiming for net-zero emissions by 2070.
By contrast, the CAT based its analysis on countries’ short-term goals for the next decade.
Bill Hare, the chief executive of Climate Analytics, one of the organisations behind CAT, explains why long-term goals are misleading:
We are concerned that some countries are trying to portray [Cop26] as if the 1.5C limit is nearly in the bag. But it’s not, it’s very far from it, and they are downplaying the need to get short-term targets for 2030 in line with 1.5C.
Niklas Höhne, an author of the report, said:
Countries’ long-term intentions are good, but their short-term implementation is inadequate.
In other words, we can make promises for the future, but we need to make drastic and immediate changes in the next few years to avoid disaster.
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World on a disastrous path to 2.4C heating based on short term Cop26 pledges
Oliver Holmes
And … the results are in. It’s very bad news.
The Climate Action Tracker (CAT), the world’s most respected climate analysis coalition, has announced that temperature rises will top 2.4C by the end of this century, based on the short-term goals countries have set out at Cop26.
That is a disastrous level of global heating far in excess of the limits in the Paris climate agreement, despite a flurry of carbon-cutting pledges from governments at this year’s UN summit.
At that level, widespread extreme weather – sea level rises, drought, floods, heatwaves and fiercer storms – would cause devastation across the globe.
A reminder: the Paris accord aspirations were of “well below” 2C upper limit, and the much safer 1.5C limit.
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Oliver Holmes
In twenty minutes, what could be the biggest news of the day is going to drop: the results of the Climate Action Tracker.
What’s that?
- The CAT is the world’s most respected climate analysis coalition, providing independent reports to policymakers since 2009.
What does it do?
- It tracks and monitors government climate action and, since 2015, measures it against the globally agreed Paris Agreement aims.
What are those?
- For the first time, rich and poor countries joined together in a legally binding treaty pledging to hold global heating to well below 2C, the scientifically-advised limit of safety, with an aspiration not to breach 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
What will CAT say this year?
- You will find out shortly.
I’m Oliver Holmes, taking over the blog. I’ll be with you for the rest of the day. If you see anything you think deserves a spot on here, email me at: oliver.holmes@theguardian.com
*Oliver Holmes (now), Bibi van der Zee and Chris Michael (earlier)
9 November 2021
The Guardian
